Following last year’s release of Lousy With Sylvianbriar, Of Montreal released Aureate Gloom on Mar. 3 this year. As usual, the band went in a new direction with this latest release, making it difficult to see the album as being bound up in a single genre. Instead, the sound may be better understand as an imaginative mixture of the genres it has explored thus far – psychedelic pop, electronica, funk, 60’s vaudeville and certainly more.

In a Stereogum interview, Of Montreal’s frontman-songwriter-linguist Kevin Barnes explains the album’s title, “Aureate means something ornamental. It would be used more to describe something beautiful. So it’s kind of a juxtaposition of the two extremes: An aureate gloom would be a sort of aesthetically interesting or beautiful ugliness, if that is possible — a sort of beautiful misery or something.” The thoughtfulness behind the title is a smaller scale example of the most interesting aspect of the group’s music, namely its prosaic lyrics.

To that end, looking all the way back to the band’s earliest albums, like 1997’s The Bird Who Continues To Eat The Rabbit’s Flower, the provocativeness and level of lyrical engagement certainly has not downgraded over the years. For those who haven’t continuously followed the band through every record release, it may be the only consistency that Of Montreal offers.
The album opens with the track “Bassem Sabry,” which is easily one of the best tracks. The vocals in some tunes are more agitating than others; Barnes gets carried away with the sassy (and oftentimes whiny) vocals, but “Bassem Sabry” gets the best of the band’s sassy double-edged sword. “I just watched my hero fail / Now I’m in a dark and violent funk,” Barnes sings in the upbeat chorus. The gloom of the lyrics opposes the instrumental grooviness – tenderly played strings, funky drums / guitar, and a call-and-response in vocals. This ties back perfectly to Barnes’ juxtaposition with the title Aureate Gloom and rounds out the album’s kind of oxymoronic theme.
Of Montreal is currently on tour, likely playing a greater amount of songs from their two most recent albums. Tour dates can be found on its website.

Aureate Gloom:

1. Bassem Sabry

2. Last Rites At The Jane Hotel

3. Empyrean Abbatoir

4. Aluminum Crown

5. Virgillian Lots

6. Monolithic Egress

7. Apollyon Of Blue Room

8. Estocadas

9. Chthonian Dirge For Uruk The Other

10. Like Ashoka’s Inferno of Memory