Album Review: Of Montreal, 'Ur Fun'

Kevin Barnes has parlayed an obsession with, and flair for, pansexual pixie-pop into a by turns thrilling and confounding decade-plus career. He’s been prolific as well as idiosyncratic: UR Fun is his 20th band album since 1997 (not counting side projects). Inspired by his relationship with songwriting partner Christina Schneider, it marks a break with his past (much of his earlier repertoire contemplated an earlier marriage).

Yet in many ways, this is Barnes reprising his most beloved tics and tropes. Always seductive, occasionally baffling, Of Montreal raid their grab-bag of peerless psych-pop on ‘Peace To All Freaks’ and ‘Polyaneurism’. And Barnes deploys his gifts for a killer chorus via the gleefully manic Gypsy That Remains – one of the catchiest things he has ever written (which is saying a lot).

Pantheist sex-pop delivered by a middle-aged man who never got over seeing David Bowie in Labyrinth for the first time won’t be to all tastes. But for those that adore Barnes’ whimsy, his eccentricity and his peerless hooks, this is a storming retrenchment from one of our most beloved weirdos.

8/10 | Out now

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