Of Montreal

In the 1980s, my mother fell hard for shadow boxes, those varnished, mounted display cases into which dozens of miniatures could be stuffed: a teensy broom, for example, and an apple Darrell Porter jersey as small as my thumb. What all this meant to her I never understood -- just as I don't expect everybody to light up for Of Montreal the way I do. The band's albums are cluttered with the kind of tiny pop songs -- sometimes twee, sometimes junky, often inscrutable -- you'd expect from Elephant 6 labelmates Olivia Tremor Control or Neutral Milk Hotel, only with a shambling folk feel instead of a buzzing psychedelia. Think mellow Kinks meets Guided By Voices: cheerful, a touch too clever, and songs that -- like the best of my mother's miniatures -- pleasantly resemble the thing they're trying to be. You just nod along and think, Yeah, these are tunes, aren't they? If that sounds like faint praise, you haven't turned on FM lately.