Of Montreal artiste-in-chief Kevin Barnes cemented his reputation as an elegant and consistent, albeit troubled, songwriter with an impressive string of full-length releases over the past few years. Charming pop sensibilities frequently concealed disturbing subject matter, suggesting alternating fits of deep depression and manic excess. Skeletal Lamping applies this motif of instability beyond the lyrical realm, shifting abruptly between musical styles throughout the album, often during individual songs.

While fans accustomed to the relatively narrow palettes of 2005’s Sunlandic Twins or last year’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? might find this hard to handle at first, it shouldn’t take long to settle into the new album’s frenzied pace. After all, the same elements are there, they're just abbreviated, chopped up and thrown together in a manner intended to play against the listener's expectations. Two of the best moments are the tracks that bookend the record, “Nonpareil of Favor” and “Id Engager,” which blend snatches of vamped-up disco, droning experimental thrash and playful, by-the-numbers dance pop. And thanks to the central role of Barnes's sexually insatiable, transgendered alter-ego Georgie Fruit, there is no shortage of suggestive, impeccably phrased vocal passages, like “I'm so sick of sucking the dick of this cruel, cruel city” in the Ween-like Prince homage “St. Exquisite's Confessions.”

Nonetheless, in the context of recent triumphs, the album is disappointing, as it fails to engage its audience in the catharsis. As explained by Barnes, “lamping” refers to a hunting technique where a darkened area is bathed in bright light to drive any and all would-be prey into the open, and the “skeletons” in question are those that haunt the singer's past, hence the album's blanket approach to musical styles and lyrical themes. Sadly, the resulting pastiche, with the troubled singer's hundreds of demons splattered across the canvas, suffers from the lack of a song like “The Past is a Grotesque Animal,” the epic, sprawling and gut-wrenchingly confessional centre of mass around which the tangential meanderings of Hissing Fauna revolved. Without an equivalent focal point, Skeletal Lamping leaves the enormous task of parsing through its plethora of ideas up to the listener.