Of Montreal

The best way to break into Of Montreal's kaleidoscopic catalog is to dive right in, letting their impeccable indie pop turn your living room into a disco that's customized for cool kids. Or at the very least, a rock opera on opening night, as scored by rubber-soled bass lines ("Gronlandic Edit," "Id Engager"), spacey synths ("Oslo in the Summertime," "A Sentence of Sorts In Kongsvinger"), and groove-locked guitars ("Suffer for Fashion," "The Party's Crashing Us"). That barely scratches the surface of Kevin Barnes' strange self-made universe, though, so you should probably skip to our Next Steps after this.

As spare and shambolic as Of Montreal's early songs were, they already sported the kind of natural pop instincts most songwriters would kill for. That goes for everything from a prism-cracking Who cover ("Disguises") to the largely solo recordings of The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy, including the brushed drums and tickled piano of "Panda Bear" and the merry acoustic melodies of "Happy Yellow Bumblebee." The early days are explored even further in our Deep Cuts, along with such brash experiments as Of Montreal's work with Kanye West's recurring coproducer, Jon Brion.

To understand how far Of Montreal's come since forming in the mid-'90s, you might wanna compare their Cherry Peel debut against, well, every album since. After all, the band's refused to sit still since the beginning, when they tore through rainbow-dipped garage rock ("I Can't Stop Your Memory"), fireside folk ("In Dreams I Dance With You") and paint-peeling pop ("Sleeping In the Beetle Bug"). The same all-bets-are-off approach applies to their latter-day tracks, including the cloud-scraping hooks of "Climb the Ladder" and the heavenly harmonies of "First Time High."

Here's the thing about Of Montreal: they would have been perfectly fine sticking to their second-wave position in Athens' sprawling Elephant 6 collective. (See also: such friends and collaborators as Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power and the Apples in Stereo.) Instead, frontman Kevin Barnes has fully embraced his David Bowie side with a steady stream of shape-shifting records and three-hour shows that match Of Montreal's manic music with lots of costume changes, confetti, and shaving cream. Speaking of the group's legendary shows, our Essentials playlist could pass as a killer setlist, from such rarely heard EPs as Icons, Abstract Thee and For Our Elegant Caste to such career-clinching fan favorites as The Sunlandic Twins, Satanic Panic In the Attic, and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?