Satanic Panic in the Attic

Artist: Of Montreal
Label: Polyvinyl Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 644110006929
EAN: 0644110006929
ASIN: B0001LYEVY

Release Date: 2004-04-06

Satanic Panic in the Attic

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General

| Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Indie Rock

| Indie & Lo-Fi | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

General

| Indie & Lo-Fi | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Neo-Psychedelia

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Tracks:

Disconnect The Dots
Lysergic Bliss
Will You Come And Fetch Me
My British Tour Diary
Rapture Rapes The Muses
Eros' Entropic Tundra
City Bird
Erroneous Escape Into Eric Eckles
Chrissie Kiss The Corpse
Your Magic Is Working
Climb The Ladder
How Lester Lost His Wife
Spike The Senses
Vegan In Furs

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Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
The Gay Parade
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Album Description

The sixth full-length and first for Polyvinyl from this Athens, GA band is a departure from previous releases. There's a 70's Afro beat and an 80's new wave influence, and the songs are full of danceable electro hooks. Limited edition LP version on colored vinyl includes a bonus 7-inch with two exclusive tracks.

Customer Reviews:

This guy does a LOT of drugs!.......2007-02-01

Unfortunately, I just recently got into this band. They are effing incredible; every song on this particular album is SO GOOD. There isn't one track that really lags behind.

Oh, and the singer does a LOT of drugs. I think every song has some sort of acid reference. For all of you psychedelics fans, you'll find these songs to be really funny at times :)

I listen to an insane amount of new music each week, and this band is putting me behind because there simply aren't enough hours in the day to hear anybody else!

Kevin Barnes at his best.......2006-11-10

This is most defanitely one of my all-time favorite albums to ever meet the presence of my ears. Although more of a Kevin Barnes solo album this cd will always be a favorite pick in my cd collection. Every single song is great. Every single song is fun. Every single song is PERFECT! No joke, this album is absolutely amazing. I have been listening to it non stop for about the last 5 months and it still hasn't gotten old. This even has what may be my favorite of Montreal song which is of course "Lysergic Bliss." This song can make you happy no matter what mood you're in! There's just something in this song that gives you such a happy feeling and as if nothing else in the world matters at the moment you are listening to the song. Perhaps that's where it got it's song title... I love the line though, "Wonder how I'm managing to smile oh when I can't even pay my rent," as it too just adds even more to the happy, carefree feeling this song presents. But this song is in no shape or form the only happy song. Many of the songs on the album too will make you happy! Many or just fun little story type things ("Chrissy Kiss The Corpse") and most will make you laugh for no reason at all and dance! But there are other's which are kind of sad such as "Ero's Entropic Tundra." But all the songs are really pretty upbeat except for the exception of "City Bird," but this song too is really amazing and makes you think. The accoustic guitar and flute really add to the feeling of this track. But anyways, if you ever want to listen to a fun album to pass the time away then of Montreal's Satanic Panic in The Attic will always be a good choice. This album has really changed my life and made me look at life in a different way.

Technically, the strongest Of Montreal album.......2006-11-05

Anything which may have been lacking in their earlier releases, especially in general musicianship, is overcome with a vengeance on this record. This is a much tighter sound, a much more focused band, than we heard on their earlier and more chaotic releases.

"Satanic Panic..." is the band's graduation from psych-pop to new wave, just managing to keep their music assiduously twenty years behind the times. As great as "Cherry Peel" and "Gay Parade" were, they were perhaps a bit sloppy. The grander the band's concept became, the more the music may have suffered, though gems like "Let's Go for a Walk" still made their way onto the band's LPs.

Despite an album cover that looks like the first panel on a Hieronymous Bosch triptych, "Satanic Panic..." perhaps surprising represents a break from so much of what the band stood for before now. Except for the Beatlesque "City Bird" and the intro to "Will You Come and Fetch Me" (which sounds like it was ripped from Pet Sounds), the band has a much more modern sound on this record. Here they do for 80's new wave what they've already done for 60's psych-pop. Their new sound succeeds on tracks like "Your Magic is Working" and "Spike the Senses", which could have been released in 1982 and would have blown the world's mind if they had been. The opener, "Disconnect the Dots", is perhaps the best example of this shift in sound, as the band's infatuation with Brian Wilson style harmonies remains but is combined with the more 80's style instumentation and arrangement. The drumming is particularly inspired this time, a real prize as it is so necessary to have a tight rhythm section to complete the sound they are attempting here.

Enough of the band's quirkines and remarkably memorable pop hooks remain in this style to make the album a 5-star release. The follow-up album, "Sunlandic Twins", fails to preserve this sound and may mark the end of the Of Montreal we know and love. But here, at least, they were still well on top of their game. Few bands manage to re-invent themselves and still come out sounding relevant and even innovative, and this record is the rare exception to that rule.

Of Montreal's Magic is Working.......2006-05-14

This album really captures the greatness of Of Montreal, who I first discovered from airplay on a college radio station. And this is not just a review of a good album, this is a highlight of a band that brings back quality to the current music scene. I mentioned before that they were like indie-pop infused with keyboardary and opera-like vocals...and the vocals are wonderfully original and the harmony is perfect. I have noticed that Of Montreal has a rare talent of effortlessly churning out catchy, extremely addictive, captivating tunes. "Climb The Ladder" is a great example. Even slower songs like "City Bird" are equally masterful. While I agree with others that it takes a certain musical background to like this album, I highly recommend it too.

Exquisite.......2006-04-04

Of Montreal's Satanic Panic in the Attic is one of those singular albums that is so richly dense, so unabashedly whimsical and so damned polished, a listener can't resist sweeping all other albums from his or her desk and (metaphorically, of course) consummating one's relationship with it via iPod's vastly underappreciated "Repeat" feature.

Opener "Disconnect the Dots", sated with twinkling piano chords and ethereal percussion, lulls one into a Technicolor netherworld where harmonics rule and not a spare measure passes unexploited. This is to constitute the landscape of Satanic. "Come disconnect the dots with me poppet" Kevin Barnes sings, and even as I look up "poppet" in my OED, I find myself bobbing my head like an autistic kid.

If there remains any lingering apprehension once "Dots" has faded out of one's headphones, "Lysergic Bliss", track two, quells it. Opening with warped tribal drums overlaid by the ritualistic chant "Ooo Shakka!" the momentum breaks off into the sort of twanged guitar riff we might expect on the new Loretta Lynn release, and just as suddenly disappears altogether, usurped by a harmonized Beach Boys-esque vocal riding a rag-time piano jangle. All this in the first 45 seconds. By 2:36 we hear Barnes doing a great Freddie Mercury impression amid a polyphony of overdubbed voices.

If you simply perused Of Montreal's quirky, high-browed lyrics on paper, you'd never guess they could be sung so much as spoken, but Barnes spits in the face of convention, melding his elaborate rhymes with roiling beats driven by buoyant bass lines, hyperactive drumming and well timed xylophone flourishes. "Rapture Rapes the Muses", for instance, is replete with handclaps and propelled by a warped Merry-Go-Round melody, but also features Barnes dropping lines as impenetrable as "You keep me lit like antediluvian Troy / But one always reveres what ones bound to destroy". Um, okay. Satanic bursts at the seams with such highfalutin lines, making one thing eminently clear: Barnes' done went to college and stuff.

But before you label Satanic pedantic, understand that there are moments of blistering earnestness here, as well. On "Eros' Entropic Tundra" Barnes lays it all out, singing, "All I ever get is sad love / Always falling for the ones who feel nothing for me / Sometimes I think I should just forget about love". But what about me and you, Barnes? Right now. On the desk. Repeat. REPEAT!

If one were asked to name the defining trait of Satanic, the obvious choice would be Barnes' elaborate vocal harmonies. While he doesn't possess the greatest voice, Barnes, like The Beach Boys, readily manipulates it to great effect, sometimes disguising it as a woman's ("City Bird"), a lounge singer's ("Your Magic is Working"), or baring it a cappella ("Lysergic Bliss").

As for reference points, there are almost too many to name. Acts like The Beach Boys, Ben Folds Five, Queen, Beck (circa Odelay) and even The Pixies can be found here. But clearly, Of Montreal has not aped these sounds so much as eaten them one by one like a ravenous Star Jones who happened upon a buffet, subsequently digesting the hodgepodge of influences into their own unique, irresistible brick, which, graciously, has been shat into our awaiting ears.

"City Bird" is perhaps the only misstep here, as the meek ode to the urban creature's unrealized freedom in a voice as stilted and toneless as Nico's feels out of place on such an otherwise densely textured, multifarious album.

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