of Montreal Album: “Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies: A Variety Of Whimsical Verse”

But with 22 cuts checking in at 70 minutes (what would have, in the '60s, amounted to a double LP's worth of material), this is a large meal to digest. At times, it's clever and/or charming ("Penelope," "Mimi Merlot"), but almost always tedious. There's no shortage of catchy ditties--"Butterscotching Mr. Lynn," "Rose Robert" (which lifts the melody from the Kinks' "Autumn Almanac"), "Hello From Inside A Shell" (tapping the playful pop feel of They Might Be Giants), the swooning "Lecithin's Tale Of A DNA Experiment That Went Horribly Awry"--but even those are often spliced and diced with soundbites and voice-overs. Ultimately, the band is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is (not an uncommon malady), evidenced by spoken tracks like "The Events Leading Up To The Collapse Of Detective Dulllight" and the simply annoying "Upon Settling On The Frozen Island, Lecithin Presents Claude and Coquelicot With His Animal Creations For Them To Approve Or Reject."