Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	71/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club	(B)
Blender
ChartAttack
Drowned in Sound	(9/10)
Pitchfork Media	(5.9/10)
PopMatters	(6/10)
Rolling Stone
Tiny Mix Tapes
URB

Skeletal Lamping is the ninth studio album by Athens, Georgia-based band of Montreal.

Kevin Barnes said about the title: "This record is my attempt to bring all of my puzzling, contradicting, disturbing, humorous... fantasies, ruminations and observations to the surface, so that I can better dissect and understand their reason for being in my head. Hence the title, Skeletal Lamping."Lamping is the name of a hunting technique of using a powerful beam to dazzle animals to the extent that they can be approached closely and collected, inspected or shot.

As with most of Montreal albums, Kevin Barnes performed almost all the instrumental and vocal tracks himself.

In an interview with Wireless Bollinger in 2007, Barnes described his concept for the follow-up to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? as an album composed of hundreds of consecutive short segments ranging from thirty to fifty seconds in length, with the intention that it "feel like one long piece with hundreds of movements."

In an interview with Pitchfork Media, Barnes stated that of Montreal would continue to evolve with Skeletal Lamping:

"Musically, it is sort of all over the place, too. There really isn't necessarily a sense of continuity there. It's definitely funkier. It's maybe developing off of things like "Faberge Falls for Shuggie" and "Labyrinthian Pomp" from Hissing Fauna. It's kind of moving things in those directions. It's something that I find exciting, as it's not something that I've really worked with a lot in the past. It still holds some mystery for me. I really feel there is something I can use in that genre. It's fun for me too because it kind of [...] goes against the kind and gentle side of indie rock. Funk music is not like that at all."

Skeletal Lamping was released on October 21, 2008. The album was released in different formats, including conventional CD and vinyl, as well as T-shirts, a button set, wall decals, and a paper lantern, the latter formats included a digital download code for the album itself.

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