Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins

Genre pop Publisher Polyvinyl External Links Official Website Polyvinyl Records

Near the release of Weezer's 2002 album, Maladroit, band tyrant Rivers Cuomo let a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine in on a little secret: he keeps a notebook of Nirvana, Oasis, and Green Day songs he calls his "Encyclopedia of Pop," analyzing them musically to unlock their DNA for his own nefarious ends. Be warned: this sort of fanatical, devout geekdom has its pitfalls. Once Cuomo started his notebook, his musical output increased expotentially, but the product suffered -- 2001's The Green Album assembly-line pop coming off professional, sunny, and impersonal, while Maladriot was professional, tormented, and personal yet impersonal at the same time.

It isn't difficult to imagine Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes maintaining a similar journal for the catalogues of the Beatles and the Beach Boys; the crush of songs he's written and released since starting the band in Athens, Georgia back in the 1990s betray his love for those artists and their contemporaries, as well as his fellow Elephant 6ers. Every waking hour not spent with his wife and/or newborn child (or hypothetical encyclopedic pop journal) is likely spent in his home studio, capturing melodies, fiddling with the settings for various synth-versions of instruments, and crafting some of the finest fake 1960s tunes ever, by himself.

A great Of Montreal song can knock you right out of a sulk, and all of Of Montreal records have a couple of winners. But generally, Barnes' work doesn't wear as well as that of his influences. Okay, here's an analogy. A Dunkin Donuts glazed donut is the best glazed donut you'll ever eat. A Giant brand donut is just nice, and when you've finished it and wiped your mouth, you're happy that the sweet, stickly treat was available for consumption, but why couldn't it have been a Dunkin Donuts donut?

The Sunlandic Twins is a smidge closer to Dunkin Donuts valhalla than last year's Satanic Panic In The Attic, which, while perky and hooky and lovingly detailed, left an unpleasant aftertaste. If Panic was a shrill, rampaging parade of aspiring hit singles, Twins is more of an album's album, more cohesive. Certainly Barnes still isn't as funny as he thinks he is, and fatherhood hasn't totally killed off his inner, ironic hipster, self-awareness, or sense of dramatic flair. But Twins doesn't aim to wow the group's indie-pop faithful - this time 'round, there are dance beats, 80s cheese, and funky percussive chocolate in the retro peanut butter.

"I Was Never Young" chases fleeting glimpses of Brian Wilson daydreams into narrow alleys with festive horn charts and hand drum whacks. The introduction to "So Begins Our Alabee" segues from poly-Barnes-vox, heavenly choiring atop synth-drum, clunk-stutter into a cross between disco and a Mega Man score before the song hits its keyboard'n'synth pinball-pop stride. Cheeky travelogue "Oslo In The Summertime" bobs along on a thick, errie repeating organ line, high "buh-buh-buh-bas" jutting out between Barnes' deadpan observations -- like "At 4 a.m. the sun is up/Look, the sky is peppered with/Seabirds and crows, all cackling" and "Pakistani children play/locked inside of the courtyard all day/Pretty people everywhere/Sunlamped tans and flaxen hair/Just tell the American not to stare" -- in meter with the spooky melody.

The insertion of a handful of brief, wordless interludes seems silly at first; later it becomes apparent that Barnes inserted them in order to give the listener a bit of breathing room between tracks. And he hasn't given up completely on his core constituency - the bonus disc packs the sunny poptastic one-two punch of "Art Snob Solutions" and "The Actor's Opprobrium," the former an over-the-top from-the-ivory-tower beatdown on the low-culture majority, the latter a Paul McCartney-flavored snuff-flick performer's exultation-turned-lament in the spirit of previous tasteless Of Montreal zingers like "Old People In The Cemetary" and "Chrissie Kiss The Corpse."

Just when it seemed easy to write Of Montreal off completely, it got a lot more difficult. Sometimes, geekdom prevails.