Of Montreal - "Nonpareil of Favor"

Skeletal Lamping is described by Kevin Barnes as his most confessional album. For an album dedicated to hunting out, killing and mounting, or cooking and sharing around, the skeletons in one's closet, I love that the introduction is a thank-you note. It's the kind of thank-you you say just before your lips dip under water. You know that kind of half-swallowing last word to the sky as you slide right under the water. Into the blaring pressure of those guitars, those transfixing and transformative guitars, all you hear is loud, and you know that you will hear always these sounds foreverever in your new shape, they will have to compliment everything else now, you hear and see and look a totally different way now. A last thank-you before starting the process of opening your skull at the seam and turning right inside-out. Kevin Barnes understands me.

[via Rolling Stone]
[pre-order starts next week for this incredible album]

Chad VanGaalen - "Rabid Bits of Time"

I moved into a house once where someone had left meat in the walls. I think the landlord had made them mad, so they put meat in the walls, and re-drywalled right over it. I moved in in the winter, slippery and messy as hell, so I didn't notice it until the first real heat wave in late May of that year. Something as hideous, as obvious, as death slept through the winter, ignored its duties until spring, until it exploded into a rush of decay. And that's exactly what this song makes me want to do. To just forget all the stuff I should be doing, all the little tiny bits of tasks and touch-ups that line the pathways of my day like knots in a winding bannister of dental floss, and just wait until it all falls out at once, until I do something different, easier, better, bigger. Chad VanGaalen understands me.

[pre-order from Sub Pop]