Oh, Canada!

OF MONTREAL founder Kevin Barnes had already released a half-dozen albums well-feted by the music cognescenti when Outback helped usher Of Montreal into the mainstream. The steak merchant’s use of “Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and Other Games)” for their jingle didn’t break them like the PSP and iPod did Franz Ferdinand and Feist, respectively, but it certainly set the stage for 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Written under a pall of relational troubles and depression, its expansive, self-indicting synth-funk psych-pop offers a dark, bitter pill of endlessly interesting gilded nooks and crannies. The poignant carnival-esque sound peers deeply into dysfunction as Barnes contemplates God and agoraphobia, among other things. Of Montreal’s latest, Skeletal Lamping, is a broad pastiche, like a potluck dinner attempting a panoply of styles, sometimes within the same song. “It’s not our most accessible album,” Barnes admits. “That’s really my thought: ‘Let’s do a record for music lovers, not for general consumption necessarily.’”
Sat., Jan. 3, 9 p.m., 2009