It's a strange day in indiedom when the line between savvy marketing and whimsical batty-ness blurs. Less surprising is that the beloved Of Montreal helped things get to this point. Lead wackjob-genius Kevin Barnes and the venerable Polyvinyl Records will offer the band's new Skeletal Lamping, due out October 7, not just as a CD and download with the expected hallucinatory artwork, but as a fashion-ish "collection." Ostensibly addressing the decline in record sales, and melding them with the kind of merchandise you usually have to pick up online or at the merch table, the collection packages the album with, separately: Good old CD and vinyl (um, a big kaleidoscopic horsey folds out from the LP cover, and some kind of butterfly-looking object comes with the CD); a paper fucking lantern; t-shirt; tote bag; button package; wall-decal package. Each one includes a digital download of the album. (Paste has the rundown). It's a bold step, even from the band that brought us the hard-to-close flower-petal package of last year's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?.
Join the discussion...