Wet with tears and hot with grease… #27 Joemus

Relatively settled domestically, in 2006 Momus took on the role of Unreliable Tour Guide at the Whitney Museum in New York. He would take groups around paintings and exhibitions and make up tall tales about them, mixed with more meaningful observations. An example can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qxO6z2CdWQ , where Momus explains just how Darwin came by his extensive skull collection. He was regularly featured on Resonance FM – an independent London community radio station – and in early 2007 performed for the HelloGoodbye Show on Resonance FM as can be seen here: https://youtu.be/N-CVnCbyBZk , supporting the album Ocky Milk, and banging out a rendition of Robert Dye.

Between June and September of 2006 Momus contributed to an art exhibition at Blow de la Barra on Heddon Street, London. The exhibition, curated by Mathieu Copeland, featured work by Momus, Ian Wilson, Douglas Copeland and others, and was entitled “The Title as the Curator’s Art Piece“. Momus’ played words spoken by the staff into the space, an accumulation of murmurs. At the opening he spoke with the producer and production manager Kamal Ackarie who asked him to contribute a track – a cover – to a box set. At the time, Momus was interested in the work of Joe Howe, who was part of a Glasgow band called Gay Against You, and had a side project called Germlin. His music was part of what was then called chipcore, music using 8/16 bit samples from computer games as part of its delivery. Heddon Street (specifically number 23) is the location for the cover shot of the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and the cover version Momus chose was Ashes to Ashes, which he records with Joe Howe – who was, incidentally, born the same year as Momus – 1984.

That difference in ages, and the ageing nature of Momus’ creator by this time, the approach of their fiftieth birthday due in 2010, seem to inform his song-writing of the period. Momus writes about his next album – if there is to be one – being what he calls “Mega-Trad”: informed by emotional cues and sensitivities rather than narrative drive or complexity. Middle-aged nostalgia and regret, the rose-coloured view of bygone years. Part of this must by its nature involve using old songs and riffs, and Momus finds himself recording cover versions of ballads and torch songs.

Momus attends a seminar in Luxembourg organised by Candice Breitz, at Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean. Titled “Call and Response”, it is an investigation into sampling, piracy and issues of copyright, and whether copyright protection has gone too far and stifles creativity. The artists there do not talk about “stealing” music, but instead about “sources”. Here is a video of a work by Candice Breitz, in which fans of Michael Jackson perform his songs: https://vimeo.com/74959758. The event ends with the artists performing cover versions of songs, and Momus chooses The Next Time, by Cliff Richard, himself often considered a cover version of Elvis Presley. The original clip of Cliff performing the song has him walking through Athens, a nostalgic trigger for Momus and the time he spent there, but the song also contains for him a combination of words and chords which affect him, the semi-nostalgic longing and yearning which is a hallmark of “Mega-Trad”.

But when Momus sees Gay Against You again, performing in Berlin, he sees his quiet, nostalgic vision contrasted with the youthfulness of Joe Howe, the joyful young man, the sad old man, the fast and the slow. Howe asks him to contribute to a Germlin track, and Momus adds a slow, reflective vocal part, influenced by Anthony Newley (who a young David Bowie himself copied). The track, Mr. Proctor, is described by Momus thus:

“I really like the way the track combines weary heartbroken middle-aged regret and youthful pop pep; gadgetry and balladry. Basically the framing for Joemus is established at this point. It’ll be Joe and me, fast and slow, 8-bit-Bolan meets croony-girning Tony Newley, sad and don’t-care happy. Electronic processing will give me new voices, new characters to inhabit.”

This becomes the template for further tracks the pair record together, and it is finally released in November 2008, on Analog Baroque in the UK and American Patchwork in the US.

The cover shows Joe and Nick literally joined together, naked and unified (as much as two heterosexual men can be), two halves of one symbiotic creature of music. The cover was designed by Stefan Sadler of Famicon, whose website and shop are here, astonishingly preserved from 2008: https://famiconexpress.co.uk/ Not having a CD of Joemus, I cannot attest to what is within the inlay, but assume it follows a similar font, layout and design to the previous album Ocky Milk and following album Hypnoprism.

Birocracy

A moment of tape scratching and squeaking introduces Momus, multi-tracked, treated, singing otherwise acapella for the first verse. The lyrics are – as on Ocky Milk – are often nonsensical and chosen for sound rather than meaning, but in general seem to point to improvement and optimism. Those apples of creative thought appear again, the little apples of our minds.

“Can you play electric organ
Can you play the lie of the land
Can you paint a better tartan
Sudden apples strewed on the dawn”

In the second verse Joe’s blips and samples appear, effects that place the song inside a computer chip. The Jackie Hangman (or Butcher Bird) is a charming individual from Australia, a bird which impales its prey on thorns to eat later. The Schengen area is the area of the EU which does not require full border controls/visas for intra-area movement. A bigger scope, indeed for those individuals fortunate enough to live in the EU and not in a quasi-medieval feudal state with rapidly decreasing individual rights.

“Butcher birds and Jackie Hangmans
Double digit fugitive
Intra-Schengen cars and blam blams
A bigger scope, the lie of the land”

The percussion joins, kick and snare effects join the rather surreal desire to be picked clean by vultures, a metaphor for rising in society, perhaps.

“Manifestly social sculpture lines
For all those well-trained men of the world
Never let me down you vultures then
Pick my bones clean, pick them all clean”

The chorus changes up a key to bring us the lovely imagery below, “harvest marble hours” is very Bowie/Eno esque, and to “glitter the culture” is a good reductio for the album as a whole, being rather glam, glitzy and yet culturally aware.

“I would play my big bassoon
(Big bassoon, like the bard’s)
I would harvest marble hours
(On the moon, to glitter the culture)”

Joe adds more drums to the song for the next verses, the cheerful melody and surreal lyrics take us into some rabbit hole:

“I would make some animal
(But not too soon, you just wait and see)
I would dig no frightening hole
(To stop, to stop, to stop it on me)”

The next verse references the children’s song I have been to Harlem.

“Finger pulse and all the parlay
Sinking faster than half of the nine
I have been to Harlem Dover
I have seen the end of the line”

After these next two lines about the awful country I live in, the chorus is repeated.

“Brick it up, the perfect England
Black it in your coronet hearts”
(On the moon, to glitter the culture)
I would play my big bassoon
(Big bassoon, like the bard’s)
I would harvest marble hours
(On the moon, to glitter the culture)”

A glitchy instrumental break follows, dating the piece somewhat but remaining cheerful and friendly rather than alienating. The chorus repeats and ends, a catchy and unthreatening introduction to the album. Already there are bipolar opposites at play, melody and glitch, logic and nonsense, meaning and abstraction.

Widow Twanky

This track is one of Grant Morrison’s favourites on this album, as they report in their blog Xanaduum. It is also an influence on their first novel Luda, wherein the main character Luci LaBang plays various roles (luda of course being the latin word for play/games), but one of them is Widow Twankey. The novel “plays” with many cultural references, and is magical realism, a tangle of meaning and reference which is very difficult to describe adequately: an interview with Grant discussing it is here.
https://www.audible.com/blog/interview-grant-morrison-luda

In the interview above Grant says “Widow Twanky” by Momus contributed its wry and bittersweet swing to the rhythm of Luda.“

The song itself is about a man who becomes transvestite in order to accommodate the girl he has lost into himself, becoming her in order to retain her: a “Widow Twankey”, an older man dressed as a woman. The lyrics are desolate and yet remain strangely calm and resigned. The backing track contains elements of the Cliff Richard cover – The Next Time – reversed, rearranged and clipped out. It is a slow swing beat, mournful, with a falsetto vocal over it, in the style of overblown melodramatic vocals of the 50s and 60s.

“So you’re sweeping
Out of my world
Widow Twanky
You were my girl

Now you’re flouncing out of my life
Not a back look
Hey
Not a bad way
To say goodbye”

The treated piano sound plays call and response with Momus.

“When you prick me
Do I not bleed?
When you stick me
Do you succeed?”

The middle eight reveals why the singer is alone, their volatile behaviour now blended within themselves along with their victim, duality of mind and being.

“There were times
Pantomime dame
I could’ve taken you down
Times I slapped you down and fucked around
And called you stupid cow
I’m paying the price for it now”

As Momus says, “Joe blows a plastic sax solo in the middle”, an instrumental break follows and leads to the finale, which outlines the singer’s final situation, with his lost idol inside him: now both male and female, a pantomime dame.

“You’re inside me
I’m inside you
You’re inside me now
What can I do?

On a road made of stone
I am walking alone as you
In the blaze of the day
I’m a pantomime dame
You’re inside me
Widow Twanky
What can I do?”

At some point Ross Hawkins (aka Le Grand Magistery act Idle Tigers) recorded a cover version of Widow Twanky, this does not seem to be available on their website, Soundcloud or Bandcamp, it was linked from the following page but the file is not there now. https://imomus.livejournal.com/412690.html

This was the second track to be “released” as a “single” on YouTube for the album, the first was Mr Proctor.

Mr Proctor

The song which probably best expresses the split personality of the record, beginning with an almost collage like cut up of sound, blips and scratches, with Momus’ absurdist lyrics and vocal backing over it.

“Sticky piggy wam wam
Fluffy on a cig jam
Bringing in the bam bam
Golly, golly

Gilly on the wheelback
Silky on the steep jack
Working on the mailbag
Billy, Billy

Trilly on the flap flap
Billy on the gimcrack
Cracker on the black jack
Sorry, sorry

Clicky on a Les Paul
Blingy on a longhaul
Barry on backflip”

The song then switches mode radically to a slow torch-song, with a vocal in a 60s Anthony Newley/David Bowie mode as a character with indistinct accent and heavily processed effects.

“I love you and I miss you and I wish that you were here
I don’t know where you are and now I possibly don’t care
But Geraldine the Bombadier has come to make his stand
Ickle Brummie asks if he can grasp his mummy’s hand”

A glitchy instrumental break is followed by further nonsense lyrics:

“Titchy click a click track
Six gone a long track
Stitching up a rich hack
Prolly, prolly
Sunny on a Sunday
Bunny on a Monday
Fanny on a Sunday
Rainy, rainy
Trading on a label
Fucking on a table
Punky like a tribble
Trick, trick trip away
Trick, trick trip away”

The second slower vocal is vaguely sinister, and ends the song.

“In the planetarium I don’t know how to drive
Don’t know how to love you but I’m glad to be alive
Ought to know you’ve something else I really do admire
I wonder who can tell you that I’ve set your hair on fire”

The song is also featured, in a different mix, on Joe Howe’s album as Germlin called THRASH’R.

Thatness and Thereness

The Ryuichi Sakamoto song, from his 1980 album B-2 Unit, is
an masterpiece in itself and a natural choice for a cover version. The album
itself was probably best remembered for the track Riot in Lagos, described by
The Guardian as one of the 50 key events in the development of dance music. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/15/ryuichi-sakamoto-riot-in-lagos.
This is in addition to the enormous influence of his band Yellow Magic
Orchestra, and his famed collaborations with artists including David Bowie,
David Sylvian and Thomas Dolby.

Thatness and Thereness is a much calmer piece than Riot
in Lagos. It is a study in phenomenology and the difference between
direct observation of an object’s qualities (as the specific object it is) and
a broader experience of its existence: thatness, and thereness: an exploration
of existence, as the lyrics put it, a grid of time in view. This is related in
the song to the way we view ourselves and our existence, the way we hide from
our own view of ourselves as it conflicts with our desired image: “But
still desire exists for self-injury, through exposure to reality”.

Momus’ version uses his voice, processed and flanged, with a simple piano
and synth backing as in the original with bass line and effects overlaid, less
glitch-bound than the other tracks, placing it in the torch-ballad category of
song, the quieter island in the youthful sea-foam which Joe Howe’s
contributions stir up.

The Jahwise Hammer of the Babylon King

Cut up from elements of the Ashes to Ashes cover, Momus described the sound of this track as 8-bit T-Rex, in that there is a spirituality to the rock sensibility which is drawn from Rastafarianism, via the influence of the film Rockers (1978) by Theodoros Bafaloukos. Rockers is a Jamaican film which stars many reggae artists of the time including Burning Spear, Gregory Isaacs, Big Youth and Leroy Wallace. Initially intended as a documentary the film expanded in making it to a narrative feature. Momus was influenced in this track by the music, characters, dialogue and performances in the film, including the movement and walks of the main characters. 

The main melody of the song is catchy, at odds with the dislocation of the blips and beeps underlying it. Momus sings the song without a Jamaican accent, you will be glad to know. The lepers may be a Bowie reference – “leper messiah” from Ziggy Stardust, and “pink monkey bird” certainly is, from the song Moonage Daydream. 

Jah Wise is Robert Campbell, an artist and selector (D.J.), who plays himself in the film and decorates the main character’s motorbike.

“Oh by Jove
Glistering gold and blistering sores
Catch him in the morning when the lepers rise
Catch him in the leggings with the clickety strides
Catch it in the basement if you’ve got the nerve
Squealing like a hot pink monkey bird”

The second verse is dark, sex related and we can not ignore the imagery of Jah/God’s hammer ruling in the bedroom here.

“Frisk you in the dark where the children ran
Fist you in the park where you push the pram
Lock you in the bedroom where you jiggle the man
The Jahwise hammer of the Babylon king”

A Jabberwocky reference introduces further reference to the walk and movement of the characters, their walking like a lion man, or with “lickety strides” and confidence.

“Slithery Tove
Walked like a leper or a lion man
Catch him in the morning when the lepers rise
Catch him in the leggings with the lickety strides
Catch it in the basement if you’ve got the nerve
Squealing like a hot pink monkey bird”

The main character in Rockers is called Leroy Wallace or “Horsemouth”, and Leggo Beast (Trevor Douglas) is another musician who appears in the film: his name meaning a crazy person, or whore.

“Love me in the morning when the vampires rise
Love me in the evening like a slaughtered bride
Spattered with the lizzy like a blackabore knife
Horsemouth Leggo Beast
The Jahwise hammer of the Babylon king”

“Meet you in the jungle where the sneakers melt
Meet you in the wonder of the thunderbird belt
Meet you in the desert when it’s wet with rain
Meet you down the skeleton’s gobbling drain
Stomping up a party in Vesuvius ash
Pumping up the junk with biological trash
Screening for the baby with the baby face
The Jah Wise Hammer of the Babylon King”

Each verse is divided by cool cut up and glitchy musical breaks. After the last verse, an extended break takes us into the next, quieter cover version, the split personality reasserting itself.

The Next Time

In 1963 Cliff Richard starred in the musical film Summer Holiday, from which the tracks The Next Time / Bachelor Boy were released as a single together, which reached number 1 in the UK Charts, as did the title track subsequently and the instrumental Foot Tapper by the Shadows. Initially, The Next Time was the A-side of the single, although retrospectively it is considered a double A (AA) single, and arguably Bachelor Boy is better remembered. The song, as discussed above, held memories for Momus and also represented the kind of ballad which fitted in with the concept of “Mega-Trad”. As such it was included on Joemus, in a relatively straight rendition delivered sensitively by Momus.

Lyrics not included here in case of copyright etc.

The Cooper O’Fife

The Cooper O’Fife (Wee Cooper O’Fife) is a traditional Scottish folk song about a woman who having got married will not cook, or clean or sew because she will lose her “comely  hue” (attractiveness). A cooper is a barrel maker, and Cupar is a town in Fife in Scotland, which is probably partly the origin of the punning title. There are many versions and variations and these include including Dan Doo and Risseldy Rosseldy (which is featured in the film The Birds). The original was recorded by Burl Ives on his debut album in 1947, and features in a 2018 episode of South Park (The Scoots), probably because of The Birds references in the episode.

Our Joemus version is bombastic, with a phat beat introducing a flatly delivered monologue from Momus, using a light Scottish accent. In this version, the wife marries literally everyone in town. The things she marries include:

“… a boy who’d never been kissed
Married a god who didn’t exist
Ye married a wally, ye married a ghost
Ye married a strangler, deaf as a post”

She marries “johnny heed in the breeze”, which refers to Hans Guck-in-die-Luft, a character in Struwwelpeter, which is a set of cautionary tales about childhood misbehaviour written by Heinrich Hoffman in 1845. She marries a “skinny-malink”, a very thin person as in the children’s song.  She marries a “scheemie”: a person who lives on a government housing scheme or estate, and a “radge” which is a wild or crazy person.

She marries a boy wearing a Pastels badge:  The Pastels were a Glaswegian indie-rock band of the early 80s. She marries the “drunk with the Special Brew”, this being a can of very strong lager associated with alcoholism. She marries a cower and timorous beastie: a reference to a Robert Burns poem about a mouse. 

She marries a glaikit football stag: glaikit meaning stupid and a football fan (the two being synonymous, usually). She marries a man with a “wank mag” i.e. a pornographic magazine.  She marries “a neep o’ the Glesga school”: a “turnip” of the Glasgow School – of Art, I assume, and a “less than tinker’s cuss”, a thing which is of no importance at all, because a tinker (who makes and repairs metal items and is peripatetic) swears a great deal, and one curse from them is of no special interest.

A delightful nursery-like melody is played by over the song about a minute in, and used several times. It’s only towards the end that the original husband delivering the song declares:

“Ye married a creep, ye married a ghoul
Ye married a neep o’ the Glesga school
Ye married a less-than-a-tinker’s cuss
Divorce is the thing, the thing for us”

Advising her not to “greet” (cry) about it the final verse suggests that her marriage fetish has spiralled into insanity:

“Ye married the cat, ye married the dog
Married them both in the eyes of god
Sixteen men who died of flu
Then you married the undertaker too”

The song ends with that great bassline thumping and tinkling notes, and we are transported across the ocean to another folk legend.

Ichabod Crane

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was written by Henry Irving in 1820 (when he was living in Birmingham, England). It was a short story, and included in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. It is a ghost/horror story about the superstitious and perhaps naïve town of Sleepy Hollow. Into the town comes the equally superstitious, but well educated, Ichabod Crane, who is popular with many in the town, especially the ladies, and makes a bid for the hand of a local heiress, Katrina Von Tassel. His love rival – Abraham Brunt (“Brom”) – plays various tricks on him and aims to remove him as a rival. When Ichabod is out on his horse he encounters a headless horseman, there is a chase and after the head (which turns out to be a pumpkin) is thrown at Ichabod he falls from his horse. Ichabod is not seen again, and it is left to the reader to decide whether the horseman was really Brom in disguise or if something supernatural actually occurred, and if Ichabod was killed or has fled. The story has become a fixture of American culture, especially popular around Halloween.

Adaptations of the story generally tend towards the fantastical, and include a Disney version in 1949 and a Tim Burton directed version in 1999 starring Johnny Depp as a more scientific, logical version of Ichabod. A television series set in Sleepy Hollow made by Fox Television ran from 2013 – 2017. There is also a 2013 animated version featuring The Smurfs, the most terrifying version of all. 

The Joemus telling started as a tribute, sonically, to Howard Devoto’s Buzzcocks, a Spiral Scratch-style parody. It changed, with Joe Howe’s contributions, to something more resembling Devoto’s next band Magazine, post-punk, with exotic flourishes and even a progressive feel.

Appropriately the song begins with a screeching synth solo and bass combination which leads into a riff heavy punk adjacent noise. The lyrics is delivered monotone and fast by the love rival Brom, the alpha male of the narrative. He makes fun of Ichabod’s learning and waifish appearance, and his fear of the undead:

“This prissy, skinny lanky-liver calculating fool
Has come to Sleepy Hollow to teach at the school
He’s a greedy snobby creep with a long snipe nose
And he loves to trick and pick on me, big Brom Bones
Now Ichabod is clever but we have verified
That any tale with ghosts in it can make him terrified
Particularly the story of a soldier, long dead
Who rides through Sleepy Hollow without a head”

The vocal is a whispered obscenity now, the name of Ichabod is almost a curse.

“Ichabod Crane!
Ichabod Crane!
Pumpkin brain!”

The second verse describes the love triangle in more detail and the chase that ensues, without specifically admitting to being the horseman..

“Well Katrina is the daughter of Baltus Van Tassel
A fruity little beauty at the harvest festival
And Ichabod the trickster wants to love her for her money
But she wants me — so that’s not funny

Well the storm it is a rising and the branches lash around
And Ichabod is riding past the hollow burial ground
When suddenly he catches sight, behind him in the road
Of a horseback stranger who doesn’t have a head”

The third verse describes the morning after and delights in Ichabod’s fate:

“Ichabod is screaming and a whipping at his horse
Trying to cross the bridge he knows the ghost can’t cross
But the horseman throws his head at him, Ichabod is down
And all they find by morning is a pumpkin on the ground”

A synth breakdown follows and gives Joemus the option to basically freak out for the next minute and a half, an at-times comic soundscape reminiscent of early Eno and Prodigy as much as Momus’ own work. The violence of the story is reflected by the mysterious ending, who knows what becomes of the brokencharted. 

Strewf!

Joemus go to the Cockney East End of London for this song, a Chas’n’Dave style knees up – slowed down a little –  with nonsensical lyrics, cockney slang and digital anachronism. Lionel Bart, who wrote Oliver! may have come up with something similar if he’d had a synthesizer and a pipe full of DMT, and co-wrote with The Residents. For non-English speaking visitors, “strewf!” is a general exclamation of shock and sometimes awe, often directed towards high price-tags. The other words used are partly nonsensical, but some are based on known slang from various parts of the UK, derived from Burgess’ Nadsat or invented.

The song’s music is a slow stomp, with Momus shouting the title in between the lines which are delivered in his gruff, Cockney speaking voice. The key switches up between each of the initial three verses. Strong hints of the music hall and performative cabaret in the sound of the backing. The song starts telling its target to cheer up and smile:

“Strewf!
What is it to ya
If it’s better all the time?
And strewf
And wouldn’t it kill ya
If you smiled from time to time?”

The second verse talks of how “yoof” is wasted on the presumably young listener. “Blimey” is another mild expletive along the lines of strewth. I’m not sure about “Mog” but it could mean to travel or move away.

God’s truth!
It’s ruddy peculiar
Ow yer fink that mog’s a crime!
Gor Yoof!
They wasted it on ya
It’s a blimmy waste of mind”

To fleg would mean to run around, exert energy, which the narrator is not wasting on the target of the song who is drubbling, running, down the line (not sure about tribby). Although “poof” is a derogatory term for a homosexual man, it may just be used here as a plosive sound.

“Ya, poof!
I wouldn’t be flegged to see you drubbling down the tribby line!
Aw poof!
I wouldn’t be begged to see you scrubbing down from time to time”

The narrator again assaults the character of the subject of the song, a fake or plastic person, who has put on his jacket put spilled his matches (kippens) over his cigarette packet.

“Strewf!
Who’d put it past a plastic person
Tugging on the larmey jacket?
Strewf!
Spilled all yer elly kippens darlin
Porrocked ’em over yer ciggy packet”

A brief musical interlude and then threatens some kind of fight, or barney, to make the target look like Gollum, describing him as “gizzard” faced, fish like and generally disgusting.

“Bless!
Yer in for an orrocking barney
Golluming up like Puss-in-the-Mud
Gor bless!
A gizzard-faced kippery cop
A scatterin scump’ry billery cod”

More warnings follow, the “blood” huts must be avoided as they walk around an enclosure or area known as the harringay.

“Bless!
Look out for the krovvy huts
That fritter the wakes of the trives away
Gore bless!
Look out of the Pearly Pranner
Who walks the Harringay”

The usual expression is the devil takes the hindmost, or last, in this case takes your under stockings, the bottom balloonings, and never come tottering back. Then an earlier verse is repeated, and the song closes with the same ominous chords and beats. 

“Strewf!
Devil take the hinderstocking
The bottom balloonery brack in the man
Gor strewf!
Away with the lot of the yer
And never come totterham back

Who’d put it past a plastic person
Tugging on the larmey jacket
Spilled all yer elly kippens darlin
Porrocked ’em over yer ciggy packet”

Dracula

A darkly humourous gothic tale, of sexual frustration and impotence. What happens to a vampire when he is no longer interested in biting the necks of virgins? A kind of companion piece to the Corkscrew King from Otto Spooky, and a duet with electro musician and singer Kyoka from The Groopies whose solo album Ufunfunfufu was released in 2008.

The song’s sound and gothic imagery were partly influenced by the Danish arm of art movement Fluxus. Made in 1970 their film Hesteofringen (Horse Sacrifice) apparently shows the ritual slaughter and dismemberment of a horse on a snowy void in Denmark. A piece about isolation and the pointlessness of war (the Vietnam war of the time), the sequence is also a play on the Hippy idea of a “happening”, and the soundtrack below by Henning Christiansen is haunting, beautiful but darkly sinister.

The song begins with fuzzy strummed, semi-acoustic guitar sounds and a thunderstorm. Kyoka’s voice is treated and auto-tuned. Animal noises are in the background, and Momus’ own backing vocals. His own speaking voice is also treated, harsh and sinister. The piece is slow-paced, ethereal, dark.

“Kyoka: Dracula you are my lovely murderer, wherever you go I will follow you

Dracula: Do not follow me, Kyoka, if you know what’s good for you”

Dracula has no interest in the girl: his “teeth are blunted”, his powers long gone. Thunder accompanies his statements of disinterest. Momus’ backing vocals pulse and throb in the rear of the song, and reversed noises and sound effects accompany the narrative.

“Kyoka: Dracula I want to feel your spooky crooked yellow teeth biting into me

Dracula: My spooky crooked yellow teeth are blunted now, Kyoka, they will not set you free”
Kyoka: Dracula, I’m lying naked on your altar, please stab your dagger into me

Dracula: If I do, Kyoka, then villagers with torches will hound me out of town”

But Kyoka is determined to raise her suitor from the dead, and offers her older relative instead. 

“Kyoka: Dracula, I am the kind of girl who does not take rejection lying down

Kyoka: Dracula, I have a cousin in Kyoto, older and much skinnier than me
Maybe she’s your type, and if you’d like to bite her neck, I’ll write a letter and see if she’d agree

Dracula: That’s very kind, Kyoka, but the time for biting necks is over now for me
I’d rather lie here in my coffin, drinking coffee, doing nothing, or watching TV”

Kyoka continues with a plea, not only for herself, but for other would-be victims of the undead, those who want to offer themselves to the ghouls of the world.

“Kyoka: But Dracula what happens to ambitious girls, as frail and pale as flowers
Who dream of nothing more than offering naked necks to vampires, and being sucked for hours?”

Momus as Dracula finally suggests that she finds other kinds of vampire elsewhere – most likely in the music, television and film industries, who will provide the kind of degradation she desires, as Spacey spacy sound effects and swirling keyboard sounds provide conclusion.

“Dracula: Other vampires walk the earth, Kyoka
Not through Transylvania, not where you expect”

As the song ends, a lively koto sounding riff is played, 8-bit synth comes in and tinkles as a scream sounds, a crazy kind of dance plays, disorienting bass takes over, pulsing between the headphones or speakers, thunder sounds as the track fades out. This playfulness matches the lyrical games that have been played, and links well to the next song.

The chords and backing for Dracula were also used for an alternate outtake called My Rose.

Goodiepal

Goodiepal is an artist: real name Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester. His work is around computer music, the computational aspects of music and artificial intelligence in music. Momus had been impressed by a lecture he gave at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin where he had talked about his “war” with the Scandinavian Educational System. Goodiepal was educated in a Steiner School – where contact with technology is minimal for primary age students.

In the lecture Momus saw, Goodiepal talked about AI and its application to music, an increasingly relevant topic. He was of the opinion that technology should not be used simply to make us act like machines, producing mechanical music, but that we should produce music which challenges AI itself: AI would want humans to:

“…do something different. We should fox them — and fascinate them. We should make art and music that is “unscannable””. (Momus describing Goodiepal’s position).

He expanded on this to discuss the relationship between Scandinavia and the US, arguing that the same sort of relationship should exist as between AI and Humans. Goodiepal remains active, and in 2017 a documentary was made about him called The Goodiepal Equation, directed by Sami Sänpäkkilä, which covers all of his activities and can be viewed for free here.

The Goodiepal Equation

The lyrics of the song are seemingly nonsensical, a parody of pop. The glitchy opening of the track gives way to a catchy hook and call and response motif.  The opening verse seems to be about a fruitless search for pleasure in all the wrong places, contrasting “eskimos” and a “tree of happiness” representing innocent pleasures with the mechanised industry of pleasure in the modern world, the “hedonic treadmill” and “dark Satanic mills”.

Who killed the eskimos who understood the rules of happiness?
One step up the hedonic treadmill
One slip back on the ugly snakeskin
Who raped the great banana growing on the tree of happiness?
One point for the dark Satanic mills
One up on the noble savage”

A bass line joins the track as it continues the lyrical theme, weaving in samples and further noise. The song asks us to stop trying to succeed, to oppose the mills, and machines that produce pleasure, represented by music and art.

“Everything we need is here
Stop trying to succeed
One point for the dark Satanic
Mills, one down for the noble savage

Who owns the pop machine
The polyester seed?
Who owns the pepper mills that
Spice up the prickly cabbage?”

A fast paced bridge, played in triplets, plays out a vignette by a willow tree, which again represents nature and simplicity.

“Down by the willow tree I joined you where you fell
You said, staring at the sky, I never knew it was that high
Don’t know you very well, you’re just another girl
Never mind, you stupid cow , I wish you hadn’t said that now”

The following verse explicitly tells us to stop running around our hamster wheels, and the songs goes on to reference Nazis, making clear the fascism of the wheels, the mills and the factories. The willow tells us to be freer, and to “Swing with the Goodiepal”: to be human and different from the machines.

“Down by the willow tree
There’s nothing that could make us happier
One step up the hedonic treadmill
One slip back on the ugly snakeskin
Stop trying to succeed
Stop running round your human hamster wheel
One point for the dark Satanic mills
One up on the noble savage

Who drank the pussy milk, who bunged the chalk in the frigid buttercup?
One step up the hedonic treadmill
One slip back on the ugly snakeskin
And just exactly how long do we have to wait for the trees
To chop the Nazi axes up?
And help the frigid buttercup
Weep me and I’ll weep you back
The willow seemed to say
Swing with the Goodiepal
Race Pat Pat off the rocks”

The bridge is repeated, but echoed, flanged and faded between the speakers, before being repeated twice at full volume, with full instrumentation, actually a triumphant sound, an assertion of human values in the face of industrialisation, despite and in spite of the very machinery being used to make the music.

Fade to White

Momus’ interest in 80s Italian disco – artists such as Alberto Camerini, Valerie Dore, Moroder and the like inspires the sound of this track, while the lyrics are indebted to T.S. Eliot with a gothic sensibility.

It starts slowly, an ominous descending run accompanies the opening verse about a catastrophic plane crash: the passengers essentially slaughtered. “Braw” generally means well-dressed, perhaps it means something else here, a brother perhaps?

“In the slaughterhouse the Braw
Puts down his bloody horror saw
The lightning strikes the airliner
Which crashes to the ground”

The song starts in earnest now, stabbing staccato synth chords meet a disco bass and beat. Again the gothic, morbid lyric describes death as a thief, and uses dead insects as a decay motif.

“Death’s a sneak thief in the night
And life is cheap is space is tight
All the broken Daddy Longlegs
Scattered on the ground”

The track pumps along, sometimes sounding as if a literal heart monitor is at the back of the mix, danceable, life and death contrasted. The final verse below of course references Eliot’s The Wasteland, again calling us to consider death.  The final Fade to White, itself a sideways reference to the electro classic Fade to Grey by Visage.

“In the slaughterhouse the Braw
Puts down his bloody horror saw
In the end we fade to white
La la la la la

Phoebus the Phoenician sails
His longboat leaves a bloody trail
Behind it flies a nightingale
La la la la la la”

A thumping bass and snare drum track kicks in for a few measures, and the track then slowly dies, the bass line slowing and the track cutting out abruptly for the following self-cover.

The Mouth Organ

A track originally written for Shazna Nessa, for her album as Milky. The track is glitchy and staggers about, like a pedestrian trying to avoid being run over, but has a strong melody. It certainly sounds of its time: i.e. 2002 rather than the year this album was released.

There is an antipathy towards the “car” as a cultural concept, as the driving force of everything that can and does happen in the world, and if we allow Momus to seem forward thinking, also looks forward to a world of fewer cars, petrol driven cars at any rate, and supports other forms of propulsion. 

The song is about a court case in which a defendant is describing a car accident, but the paucity of language – mere words – to describe such a thing causes her to describe it instead using a mouth organ, noise in lieu of words. At the end of the song she is released, but she is not looking where she is going, so happy is she, that she is run down by a laundry van. This is a mistake, in my view, it should be an electric milk float that kills her because she can’t hear it.

The song begins as a bouncy, stop start music hall piece, building the instrumentation in as it goes.

“She took the stand
Her time had come
To describe the screech of tyres
The sudden hit and run
She pulled out from her purse
The mouth organ
Began describing all she’d seen
In an eerie, haunting tune

The cloudy afternoon
The unexpected turn
Resulting in the death of the pedestrian
How the accident was caused
How the current war
And all that happens in this world
Has been written in the stars
From the day they invented the car”

The breakdowns and glitches on this track are very reminiscent of the breakdowns on Oskar Tennis Champion, and similarly disorienting. The instruments mostly cut out for the following verse as the verdict is delivered and the defendant meets her fate.

“She finished up a little out of breath
The judge stood up and threw out all her arguments
He had a good mind, so he said
To sentence her to death
But she’d suffered quite enough
Said the counsel for defence”

“She stepped out of the court
Happy to be freed
Failed to see the laundry van
Bearing down at speed
All that happens in this world
Has been written in the stars
From the day they invented the car”

The song fades out, and we move on to probably (for me) the highpoint of the album.

The Man You’ll Never Be

The strength of this song is in the wordplay, the evocative melody and chord arrangement, the world building that is implicit in the storyline and the way the song paints a clear picture of the conflicted, delusional relationship at the heart of it. The song uses a cyclic melody based on fifth intervals, often used in Momus’ earlier work and a very “classic” sound for him. Momus treats his voice a little here, as on Widow Twanky, to assume the female role in the song.

A scratchy opening, from a vinyl sample, is joined by a deep, wide bass synth line and this is counterpointed with a gentle treble piano line, snare and cymbal, playing in that cycle of fifths. The first verse opens with just the bass line and drum accompanying Momus.

The woman singing the song begins by describing her love, who is clearly unreliable, untrustworthy and probably unfaithful:

“I don’t care where you’ve been
I don’t care what you’ve seen
Underneath the mountains
On the scrotum of the sea”

The piano joins now, with backing vocals and tinkling, slightly atonal effects.
She continues to describe the faults she does not care about, she does not care about how he crashed his car, but that also means, of course, that she does not care about his welfare. All she ever sees in the man are the qualities he does not possess: the shadow of the man he did not grow into and never can be. Like many people she has settled into a relationship which does not satisfy her, in which she is not really wanted, and yet cannot leave it, for love of the man he could have been.

“I don’t give a shit who you are
How you crashed your favourite car
All I see before me
Is the man you’ll never be”

A more saw-toothed bass line plays over the following verse, the darker elements of the story now highlighted. The following lines cleverly outline the woman’s infidelity, and her denial of her own infidelity to herself. The world building is evident here, as we learn that one or both of them are at art school.

“And though I love no other
And no other’s brother
And sometimes the technician
In the art school lavatory”

A minor and slightly unexpected chord change allows the piano to counterpoint with a pretty melody line, to contrast against the obvious betrayal being described and denied. The verse ends with a forcefully played, sentimental and resolving piano line which throughout the song represents the end of a thought.

The woman denies to herself that she has “betrayed” her lover because, of course, all she has betrayed is the man that he will never be, and none of her infidelities match up to that imagined or potential person in any way.

“Know I never betrayed you
Though — technically — they slayed you
None of them were half the men
That you will never be”

There is another shift here, with a vocoded effect playing against the lyric, a questioning sound as the singer questions their entire decision to be with the man.

“You look strange in the moonlight
I wonder if I’ve done the right thing
To invite you to share your bed with me
With the hole in your jacket
The shoe in your pocket
One eye dangling from the socket
Of the man you’ll never be”

The song is quieter again as the singer focuses on what positive points the man may have, if any.

“Well you have much to commend you
But who would befriend you
With the alcoholic swagger
No-one’s ever pleased to see”

Another unexpected chord change on the word “spider” allows emphasis on the strangeness and unpleasantness of his qualities, and forces us to focus on the oddity and meaning of the following lines: that the man is pleased not to be that man he will never be.
I think she means that he is a Scrooge who does not want to be redeemed, pleased to be a miser, pleased to be a spider.

“You’ve got the eyes of a spider
The handshake of a miser
I guess at least you’re pleased you’re not
The man you’ll never be”

The vocoder returns as the singer ponders the man’s enemies, but returns again to the relationship she seems trapped in.

“And though many refuse you
Hide from you and try to lose you
Some run you over
Quite deliberately”

The singer again declares her love for the man’s shadow: despite his manifold imperfections.

“I will not shirk my duty
For I love you truly
Not for who you are
But for the man you’ll never be
You’ve got the lips of a chicken
The tics of a victim
The eyes of a liar
And the belly of a whale
I don’t care what stupid things you’ve done
How you stared into the sun
When all I see, increasingly
Is the man you’ll never be”

The song continues with Momus singing wordlessly and the vocoder and piano accompanying him over a repetition of the verse melody, leading to one more stanza.

“And though I loved no other
And no other’s brother
And the jackass in the record shop
Who burns the fake CDs
Know I never despised you
But someone’s undermined you
It’s plain to see you’re half the man
That you will never be”

After this melancholic rendition, the song ends abruptly on a piano chord. This is for me the best song on the album, melancholic, thoughtful and insightful, psychologically sound and detailing both a moribund, possibly abusive relationship and the reasons why it continues. Although the final song on the album has a claim to being the best as well.

The Vaudevillian

In which the vaudevillian character from Mr Proctor is put to rest. 
The idea of a clown, aged, now irrelevant, his act tired and unwanted, is a cliché but a powerful one. The portrayal of Billy and Archie Rice in Tony Richardson’s film The Entertainer (1960), starring Laurence Olivier,  is a touchstone for this image, and Momus’ song follows a similar arc. One might think also of the later career of Norman Wisdom, or Jerry Lewis.

The song opens appropriately with applause, stirring synth strings as the Anthony Newley sounding voice sing/speaks over tenderly played guitar, sounding cracked and old.

“You take the stage, you’re at your best
They’ve hushed the stalls at your behest
You start your act, you sing your songs
The house is packed , they sing along
You seem, they say, so very gay
The vaudevillian, one in a million”

Applause continues as the song continues to describe the better times.

“The girls you’ve loved, the times you’ve known
The wars you lost, that old trombone
And now the lines that crease your face
Are wet with tears and hot with grease
You know your lines, but God knows what they are
The vaudevillian, one in a million”

There is an instrumental break, playing the verse melody on distorted piano, with glass tinkling along with it. The sounds are echoing, as if in an empty theatre. The crowd noises in the following verse in the background are no longer applauding.

“You’re out of date, they’ve changed the styles
They love to hate, they hate to smile
They start to stamp, they start to boo
You’re some old man, they don’t know who
You’ve lost your shape, you’ve lost your “you”
The vaudevillian, one in a million”

Funereal bells and darker noises now appear, louder and more ominous. We hear of a coffin, loaded onto the stage and ready to receive the performer. The ignoble end of the vaudevillian is summed up in the lines that follow: “some lament while others disinfect”: sadness at their passing equally joined with fear at sharing their decay.

“A coffin now appears, it’s very strange
They’ve put it here up on the stage
They push you in, the trim is plush
It’s very grim, away you’re rushed
And some lament while others disinfect
The vaudevillian”

The voice is now muffled, as from a coffin. The singer awakes in a coffin, as he smells the rotting corpse of God, cannot resist one more humourous “bloody hell!” as he lays there rotting. 

It is tempting to wonder if Momus feels this way about, for instance, his own pop career, whether there was a feeling that his own music career could end a similar way, ignored, rotting and the carcass of what once was. Although he has often made songs about the topic, most notably How to Get, and Stay, Famous from the album Ping Pong, he is rarely so morbid in reality. It’s more a humourous consideration of the way celebrity is viewed, as something that literally dies when the audience moves away. What is a performer without an audience? What is God if no-one is praying?

“And now you take a little nap
And when you wake the stars are black
And God is dead and there’s this smell
And you’re not feeling very well
It seems you’re dead, oh bloody hell!
The vaudevillian, one in a million”

The main melody is played on a glitchy synth backed by samples of Momus’ voice, and the album fades away.

Reviews

Joemus received generally positive reviews.  On PopMatters website Jason MacNeil described the sound as a “hipper, smoother Hot Chip” and his highlights were The Cooper of Fife and “the Supertramp-ish The Mouth Organ“. Casey Rae-Hunter on Dusted Reviews praised the “opaque allegory and raw emotion combined with highbrow irreverence” of Dracula. Record Collector described the album as an “absurdly eclectic audio
wonderland”.

Next Projects

Following the release of Joemus, Momus continued working as an unreliable tour guide, initially at Vienna Art Week, posing as “The Munchausen Docent”, and contributed to numerous art exhibitions during 2009. He also continued to write for publications such as the New York Times, Frieze. The early part of 2009 saw him completing his first book The Book of Scotlands (Solution 11-167). The book was a description of  parallel world Scotlands, some of them actually generated by writing descriptions of Japan and changing the names.

“Some of the pieces in the book produce an alternative Scotland by taking texts I’ve written about Japan and changing key words so that they become texts about Scotland. The world-generative power and the interest comes in the wrongness of the scenarios that result — a wrongness which tells you something about the real Scotland.”

He was also working on The Book of Jokes: a novel in which various famous jokes come literally to life and are retold as anecdotes as if real. These anecdotes had been written from the mid-noughties onwards, and even warranted their own YouTube channel where they were read out, which is here: Book of Jokes.

Both books would be published in 2009, and no album would be recorded that year. Momus continued to write, with ClickOpera becoming quite a respected art blog. In the end, however, this proved too time consuming, and perhaps perversely biting the Web 2.0 hand that fed him, Momus ended ClickOpera in February 2010, for the reasons stated here: ClickSwanSong.

He created a virtual avatar called Maria Wolonski, who would take care of his admin, and represent him on Twitter, which is why  his Twitter handle remains @wolon, and created a Facebook account.

He also reopened imomus.com, where he is to this day, virtually, and installed a notebook column entitled Zuihitsu: later in 2010 this was replaced by a tumbler account entitled Mrs Tsk (The Thoughts of Chairman Momus), which provides the right hand side feed on imomus.com. Momus’ main YouTube account momasu was created in 2006 and video playlists for all his albums from 2010 onwards are included there.

The next album to be released would be Hypnoprism in 2010, and mark a period of returning to music, hoping to find and capture the “catnip” factor that some pop music has. It would be recorded mostly as Momus on his own, but would feature contributions from John Talaga and Joe Howe.