Of Montreal is one of the few bands whose changes you can track through its song titles. In their early, kazoo-laden bedroom pop days, the titles were twee but lucid, but as the career went on, the titles got more bizarre and impenetrable, advertising the darker sides of life that Kevin Barnes had seen. They went from "Springtime Is the Season" in 1997 to "Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse" in 2007; from "One Of A Very Few Of A Kind" in 1998 to "Triphallus, To Punctuate!" in 2008.

Of Montreal, "First Time High (A Reconstructionist Remix of "An Eluardian Instance")" (2009)

get it on the Jon Brion Remix EP

"First Time High" is one of the most brilliant editing jobs in history, or at least one of the few where we can actually see the before-and-after. The actual changes made are minimal, but the new song title acknowledges what the difference between the oblique and muddled original and the clarity of the reconstructed version.

The polish that Brion gives the song brings out the irresistible hook of the chorus, the contrast of the nostalgia of youth ("Do you remember? Our last summer as independents?") with the a relatively benign but still confusing and frustrating life of an adult ("I asked your friend if you were available, she answered, 'no, but yes, oh well oh well, yes and no,'"). The beauty and pure pop craft of this song was hid in Skeletal Lamping's scattered presentation, and this new version may lose the novel approach, but it's a better song in its more basic form.

I only wish Brion had redone the whole album, or at least take the middle part (0:50 - 1:50) of "Women's Studies Victims" and turn it into the dance floor electroclash raver that it's dying to be.

BONUS TRACK: Of Montreal, "Women's Studies Victims" (2008)

get it on Skeletal Lamping

Funny that the man who, a decade ago, sang "I will be a good boy and never tell you the bad things that I think about, the nasty little things I'll keep them to myself", now sings, "I took her standing in the kitchen, ass against the sink."