Thecontrollersphere, the latest EP from indie pop staple Of Montreal, is in many ways a compilation of rejects. Clocking in at only 23 minutes, the five-song record was primarily composed of tracks cut from their last release, the critically-acclaimed False Priest. Sadly, while False Priest witnessed the band successfully blending funk, electronic, and R&B influences, the tracks that made it onto TCS don’t mesh nearly as well, and the EP feels discordant as a result.
But the news isn’t all bad—in fact, this lack of cohesion makes TCS interesting, in a clinical sort of way. The EP dissects many of the diverse musical influences of the band’s previous releases, strips them down, and mashes them all together, resulting in interesting tracks like the revue-esque “L’age D’or” or the eight-minute saga “Holiday Call.”
The EP’s opener, “Black Lion Massacre” feels like the black sheep on an album full of them. It starts off with industrial rumbles, dissonance, and crunching guitar strokes, augmented by feedback and waves of steady percussion. Singer Kevin Barnes murmurs above the cacophony about ritual murders and ascensions, adding to the song’s creepy, off-putting vibe.
Fortunately, the other tracks bring out sounds that are still varied, but more familiar to fans of the band: “Funkt Sass vs the Root Plume” grounds itself pleasingly in reverbed psychedelic pop, as Barnes croons about “transience exploited vacant energy fields.” However, the abrupt shifts between genres that occur in other songs are a little hit-or-miss—“Holiday Call,” which drifts from psych-funk to a violin-and-synthesizer-anchored world music sound, gives the impression of multiple, incompatible songwriting techniques clumsily pasted together within a single—albeit lengthy—track.
Ultimately, TCS isn’t more than the sum of its parts, but in this case, that sum is much better than what most would expect from a collection of castoff songs. Folks already partial to the band’s recent, more experimental releases stand to gain the most from listening, but everyone else should just listen to the tracks that were good enough for False Priest the first time around.
Voice’s Choices: “L’age D’or”
