~Tales Of The Momii~#3: Circus Maximus

The latest in my appreciations of the works of Momus. As always, the views and the interpretations of the songs and ideas are mine alone, and may bear no similarity to what the artist intended.

In 1986, Nick Currie found himself living in a bedsit in Streatham, nurturing the crumbs of the foundation of a solo career, almost half a decade on from the demise of his band The Happy Family, and having already struck out with a couple of EPs.
Now, he decided, it was time to rewrite the Bible. The result was the first fully fledged Momus album, 'Circus Maximus'.

There was no record label arch or artier in 1986 than él Records. A subsidiary company of Cherry Red, the label specialised in aloof, angular, over-intellectualised, well-crafted Pop music, housed in sleeves that even Factory or 4AD would decry as pretentious. And Momus' debut album fitted the bill to a tee.
Adorning the sleeve himself, Nick appears on the front in the guise of Saint Sebastian, pale, thin and gaunt, crucified and shot through with arrows. On the reverse he is the very embodiment of the él artist; well cut suit and tie, angular fringe and razor sharp cheekbones.

And the music itself is a purely European tract, all French chansonnier, Scottish Folk and English chamber Pop. So out of step with the flashy synthetic cheesiness that draped British music of the time that it's little wonder it fell on mainly deaf (or indeed 'tin') ears in it's day. Critics of the day sniped at its lofty, wordy attitudes; Jack Barron of the NME suggesting that Nick was maybe too well read and was trying to condense his appropriated knowledge back into easily digestible soundbites.
The album was split into two sides, something you could do in the days of the vinyl LP, with one side containing the religious songs, and the other dealing with the trials and mores of life itself.

The album starts with one of Momus' most hardy perennial tracks, 'Lucky Like St Sebastian'  which contains one of my favourite opening lines of any song or album ever; "Once upon a time there was a man called Saul// Who persecuted Christians till he saw// That the work was bearing fruit for the Christians// So the man changed his opinions and his Christian name to Paul". Now you have to admit that that is not just a million miles away from "Club Tropicana, drinks are free// Fun and sunshine, there's enough for everyone", but is also far removed from anything Morrissey, Michael Stipe or any Indie hero of the mid-Eighties was turning out.

What Momus did was to apply a Presbyterian approach to his religious writing, as opposed to the heavy Catholicism that ran through most of Rock's canon from such artists as Nick Cave, Lou Reed or even Bono. This allowed Momus to focus on the more sexualised texts of the Old Testament without all the baggage of guilt and the-love-of-God-as-a-burden. Thus songs like 'The Lesson Of Sodom (According To Lot)', 'King Solomon's Song And Mine' and 'John The Baptist Jones' not only bristle with a sexual frisson, but also take an almost Pasolini-esque step back and view the subject with a more modernist, matter-of-fact approach....

Side Two's less religiously focused songs are still steeped in the world of literature; 'Rules Of The Game Of Quoits' suggests an air of W. Somerset Maugham or Evelyn Waugh as a middle class English boy and girl become sexually involved, with the rules of the game acting as a metaphor.

And in 'The Rape Of Lucretia' Momus manages to meld ideas from Goethe's 'Faust' with the fall of the Roman Empire...

In the dazzling 'The Day The Circus Came To Town', an uptight Calvinistic Scottish town is liberated by the arrival of the titular Circus and the once timorous community descends into the carnal madness of a work by Goya or Alighieri....

Then there's another of Momus' early classics, 'Paper Wraps Rock' in which Nick ruminates upon the unavailability of the very famous and beautiful (Garbo, Monroe, Helen Of Troy) and which contains a rather spooky reference to Diana Spencer which alludes to her other-worldly beauty being kept behind the double locks and bulletproof glass of her Limousine, as she is perpetually hunted, almost as a sport. We all know how prescient this turned out to be....

'Circus Maximus' is an excellent piece of work, but falls just short of the classic albums he was just about to deliver. Most of the tracks feature intricately picked acoustic guitar backed with heavily atmospheric synthesiser passages. Nick also seems to have found his Momus voice, the tremulous vibrato of his Happy Family vocals replaced with a mellifluous sotto-voce seductiveness that lures the listener in.
There was nothing else like it at the time, and there's precious little like it now!

'For love will endure or not endure
Regardless of where we are'
 
~Gordon~

You can download Circus Maximus here
(This link does not belong to myself or the ~Streetlamp~, so while I can remove it from our page, I cannot delete it from the Internet)

~Tales Of The Momii~#2: The Early E.Ps

The second in my own personal overview of Momus' recorded career. Once again, I must point out that the interpretations of the lyrics are mine alone, and may not be entirely what the author intended.

In 1983, Nick Currie split up his band The Happy Family, citing differences with label 4AD as the main cause. A catch-all of unreleased tracks was assembled under the name 'The Business Of Living' and released on cassette only by label Les Temps in early 1984. No matter how hard I've scoured the Internet, I simply cannot find a recording of this anywhere, so as it stands I can offer no opinion on it.
In the meantime, Nick moved to London and began putting some new songs together, songs that would see the light of day in July of 1985. Songs that would be released under the moniker, which he would from then on be identified with....Momus; the Greek god of Mockery...

Momus' debut release was a 12", 3-track e.p entitled 'The Beast With Three Backs'. Opening track 'Ballad Of The Barrel Organist' immediately sees a shift away from the angular post-Punk jangle of his previous band and sets out the stall with a predominantly acoustic musical backing, seeming to consist of guitar and autoharp over which Momus details that first night of passion between new lovers. Momus' sexual frankness coupled with his overwrought romanticism have set him apart from almost all other songwriters, even contemporaries like Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker, and the blueprint from which all his subsequent work evolves is found right here.

With 'Third Party, Fire & Theft', the key word seems to be 'sparsity'....over a very basic rhythm that doesn't appear to have been created on anything resembling a drum-kit, the music jitters and jars with recurring gaps of silence as Momus reveals that men may well insure themselves up to the hilt against all kinds of physical damage, but no premium policy can ever protect against the psychological fuck-up of their suburban wives' infidelities at the hands of a serial womaniser..."Any day now the adulterer will arrive in our suburbs//Knock at the door with a Durex to enter our Laura Ashley wives"...
 
Third track, and probably my favourite, is 'Hotel Marquis De Sade' in which Momus paints a vivid picture of a pre-package holiday era Mediterranean hotel in which, in a single room on a single bed, two middle class English boys and an middle class English girl make 'the beast with three backs'. There's an early indication of Momus' genius in the way he conveys naivete with raw sexuality...."And Colin loves Alice// And Alice loves me// And I love the stains on the ceiling// And pump like the sea"...

These "three tracks about threesomes" as Momus himself put it, were released on the él Record label, a label which seemed to suit Momus' early career perfectly, being aesthetically stylish, predominantly European, and very arch and arty. The songs were recorded in Brussels, and it was to Belgium that Momus would look for inspiration for his next release....another three track e.p entitled 'Nicky' which consisted of three interpretations of the songs of Jacques Brel.....

The 'Nicky' e.p was the first record of Momus that I ever purchased, having seen it reviewed in the short-lived music magazine Underground. Released in June of 1986, again on él Records, the three tracks saw Momus take the basic lyrical and musical ideas of Brel and adapt them to suit his own persona. He also dispensed with Brel's orchestral bluster and applied a more minimalist lounge-pop approach, more in the style of  Serge Gainsbourg than Brel himself. At this point in time, all I knew about Jacques Brel is that he was a big influence on Scott Walker, whose altar I worshipped at. It was handy that two of the tracks that Momus covered were also two of Scott's best interpretations; 'Jacky' and 'If You Go Away'.
Lead track 'Nicky' sees Momus adopt a rather different disguise than that of both Brel and Walker, in this tale in which Satan walks among us in various camouflage. In Brel's version the Devil walks the earth as a Spanish Lothario and an opium addicted pimp before ascending to Heaven to reclaim his name of Lucifer. In Momus' version he's a down at heel cabaret artist living in Bromley, Kent and singing to bored housewives. In the finalé he still ends up in Heaven but as a washed up entertainer, 'prancing and Cliff Richard-ing' for bored Angels.....

Brel's 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' aka 'If You Go Away' is one of the greatest doomed love songs of all time, as I already claimed and covered in a previous Blog on Brel. Scott Walker's version remains pretty much the definitive cover version, but Momus' version, retitled 'Don't Leave' (which is actually a closer translation) is still strong stuff. Sticking closer to Brel's own musical palette for this one, Momus conjures up his own imagery of a man knowing his great love is about to end, rather than stick to the translation that Scott (and virtually every one else who has covered the song) have used. Marc Almond, on his own album of Brel covers, also applied this approach....

The third track, 'See A Friend In Tears', I'm afraid is not a song of Brel's that I know at all. Even of the many Jaques Brel albums and CDs that I have, this track never seems to surface, so I can't offer any comparison. However, this is still a fantastic song, and Momus delivers what I feel is one of his best vocals ever, and a style of singing he would move away from as his songs became less chansonnier and more electro-minimalist....

In March of 1987, having left él for Creation Records, Momus delivered a third three track, 12" e.p, this time with all the songs seeming to be about death; 'Murderers, The Hope of Women'.

The title track is one of Momus' most brilliant songs and one that has remained a huge favourite amongst his fanbase. Despite the initially misogynistic appearance of the title, the song's meaning couldn't be further from that. Momus sees women's free, creative and productive lives slowly destroyed by the soul-sapping dependence men inflict upon on them in the name of love and marriage...."In my pipe and slippers// Do I look like Jack the Ripper?" he asks. In a later interview, Momus admitted that such imagery came from the slow dragging down of independent women as they involve themselves in dull, stifling marriages or relationships, parallelling the slow motion death Louise Brooks suffers at the hands of Jack The Ripper at the end of 'Pandora's Box'. Some may find this fatalistic view of relationships a tad OTT, but I'm sure there must have been some women who knew exactly what he was getting at...

Now, middle track 'Eleven Executioners', I have to confess is not one of my favourite songs of his. I just find it a bit too arch and contrived. Plus despite using imagery from Borges and Proust, the lyric remains a little too oblique and uninvolving for me. I'll include it anyway and let you make up your own mind....

Final track, 'What Will Death Be Like?' however, is another classic. Pretty much a list song, Momus decides not to answer his own question and tell us what death will be like, but to rhyme off a huge list of things that make life such a thing of wonder and complexity to be cherished, enjoyed and even feared. Every line of the song begins with the words, "Death will be unlike....", after which Momus lists things as diverse as a garden in Autumn, the paintings of Holbein, roller coasters, Jean Paul Sartre, Narnia, moths flying into flames, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the last day of Summer, Edgar Allen Poe, strippers, Ian Curtis, glimpsing the sea through the boardwalk, the tractatus of Wittgenstein etc etc....

Songs from the 'Beast With Three Backs' and 'Murderers' e.ps were collected on a strange and eclectic album called 'Monsters Of Love' that Creation put out in early 1990, along with a remix of his most successful single 'The Hairstyle Of the Devil', and three 'new' tracks. 

 I don't know if there was anything dodgy or suspect about the album, but when Momus made his Creation albums available for free download, he didn't include this one! Also, on his own very thorough website, he writes revisionary liner notes for every album in his career, again except 'Monsters Of Love'.
Of the three new tracks; 'Monsters Of Love', 'Gilda' and 'Morality Is Vanity', only the last one, I feel, is worthy of appearing amidst some of his finest work. The song evokes early twentieth century bohemian cabaret and contains one of my favourite lines of his, "The ugly, given flattery, grow vain". The song is about fiddling while Rome burns, about having a good time as the world goes to Hell on a handcart, and perhaps that's every bit as relevant now....

These three e.ps were bold and brilliant works at a time when Pop music, even some Indie Pop music, was becoming insufferably synthetic, glib and worthless. Songs of quality musicianship, timeless in their delivery and containing some of the most breathtaking lyrics in Pop's English lexicon. The greatest tragedy of course is that it didn't outsell U2!!

Awake Ye Heathens!!

~Gordon~

The album 'Monsters Of Love' which contains many of the tracks covered in this Blog can be found here
And the EP 'Nicky' can be downloaded here

~Tales Of The Momii~#1: The Man On Your Street

Ever since we first started this Blog, Griff has been pestering me to write an article on Momus, almost purely because he knows that Momus stands up there next to Morrissey in my echelon of musical heroes. And that has been the problem in why I've resisted in writing about him for so long. I could never encapsulate what Momus's songs and records have meant over this past (almost) 30 years any more than I could try to explain what Morrissey has meant in my life in a single Blog entry.
BUT.....I did feel that I would have to write something, so what I'm going to do (or attempt to do) is tackle each album that Momus has released, in some sort of chronological pattern. This may become quite a hefty undertaking, and it may become difficult once Momus abandons the formulaic fashion of releasing proper records through a record label, but I may as well give it a go.
It may not be entirely accurate, and some of my interpretations of his songs and lyrics may be vastly incorrect, but that's just it....they're MY interpretations.

So let's start at the beginning, way back before he even was Momus....back when he was Nick Currie of The Happy Family.....
It's March 1982, and 4AD Records have just released the 'Puritans' EP by The Happy Family. This band are comprised of former members of Postcard legends Josef K, who have decided to back Paisley born, Edinburgh-based, literature student Nicholas Currie, who had sent them his lyrics.
The lyrics are deft, intelligent and have a barely-suppressed, delicate fury, borne from Nick's current 'angry young man' status. In future sleeve notes for the re-issues, Nick puts forward the theory that since they scrapped National Service in the UK, the angry young men brigade form gangs instead, and some of those gangs become bands. And in the late 70s/early 80s there was a lot of anger channelled through music.
Lyrically, the three tracks on Puritans; the title track, Innermost Thoughts and The Mistake, bristle with an anti-Calvinistic rancour and a political point of view developed and reflected through the prism of Theodor Adorno's 'Minima Moralia', Nick's most studied reading matter of the time.
Over a staccato rhythm, guitars jangle and chime, more like freshly sharpened knives than a tambourine, and Nick delivers a vocal not unlike Edwyn Collins, of those other Postcard legends, Orange Juice.
"Oh, take these Puritans away!"
It's a perfect slice of knowing, arch post-Punk/Pop, completely of it's time, yet carbon dated due to it's unsparing production. Harsh, yet oddly endearing!


But if Puritans was a quirky, of-it's-time, Indie-pop song, it gave no clues as to the scale and intellectual ferocity of The Happy Family's next release; the album 'The Man On Your Street', released in November of 1982.
The subtitle strap-line of the album should have been a warning; "Songs From The Career Of Dictator Hall: Witnessed And Presented By The Happy Family!". Yes, for their first full length LP The Happy Family delivered a concept album based on the fictional life of a European Fascist dictator known as President Hall.
The album's dramatis peronae comprises four main characters; President Hall; his unknowing nemesis, an Evangelical detergent salesman; Samuel, the salesman's son; and Maria, the daughter of the President.

Nick Currie claims in the sleeve notes of the reissue that his own inner turmoil, at what was a turbulent time in his personal life, led to the creation of an unlovable recording. The album's opaque, obtuse lyrical concerns; the way the listener is dropped into the middle of situations involving characters who have not been properly fleshed out yet; is reminiscent of films of Renoir, Antonioni or Fassbinder, or the books of Thomas Pynchon or Bret Easton Ellis. The listener has to piece together the clues often buried deep and cloaked in political or psychological theories they have no learning in. It was deliberately inpenetrable, Nick casting himself as a hybrid of Mark E Smith and Kasper Hauser.

The music too, offers little relief to the already brain-hurting perplexity of the listening experience. There are few obvious reference points for the listener to identify with. The music shifts from baroque chamber-pop to a forthright Post-Punk jarring, the occasional moments of fluidity often torn asunder by well-executed time signature shifts. The voice has not yet become that which is so beloved of his listeners, and still sounds too mimicking of other contemporary vocalists of that time. All of this leads to an album that could hardly be filed under 'Easy Listening'. I have to confess that of all Nick Currie's records, this is the one I have listened to least. It can't simply be put on as background music, nor can it just be played for a little soothing balm at the end of the working day. It's an album that you have to sit down and tackle in one sitting. Even then, only some of the album's narrative themes become obvious; Hall achieved his wealth and power thanks to a lottery win (though this was a full 12 years before the UK National Lottery would begin); like Bergman's The Silence, all the action takes place in an unnamed European city at a time of war; Maria, daughter of President Hall will fall in love with Samuel, the salesman's son and they will join the Red Brigade to overthrow the dictator; the catalyst for the revolution will take place during March in the city of Turin....the album ends with the words, "March in Turin// Where lovers can win// March in Turin// Only in strange times and places....// Now's our chance// Now!".


Okay, so it's hardly 'Club Tropicana'....but that's the point! In 1982 Nick Currie was an angry young man in a five man army, his music his rifle, his words his bullets. But his first offensive had not quite had the desired effect he had hoped for. Only by venturing out on his own, donning the garb of Momus, the Greek god of Mockery, and creating one of the most dazzling bodies of work in the left-field Pop would he see his planet-sized imagination bear fruit.

The Man On Your Street is not an album I could recommend to everyone, it's a complex enigma that requires both patience and a detective's willingness to investigate; like the books of James Joyce, or the films of Dreyer, you have to WANT to listen to it.

But it's a rewarding challenge, and the first footsteps of a Pop genius.

Take revenge!

~Gordon~

If you do WANT to listen to album(along with the Puritans EP), you can download it here
(This file does not belong to the ~Streetlamp~. If anyone is unhappy about us posting it, we can remove it from our page, but we cannot remove it from the Internet)

~Winter Wassailing~#6: 'Christmas On Earth' by Momus

A Selection Of Seasonal Songs In The ~Streetlamp~ Stylee!

I'm almost embarrassed to write this one!

Why? Because Momus, a.k.a Nick Currie is one of my favourite artists of all time; up there with The Smiths, The Beatles, Scott Walker and The Fall, yet somehow I have yet to write a proper Blog about him here on the ~Streetlamp~. So, it looks like this short Blog in praise of his fantastic, twisted Christmas track 'Christmas On Earth' is all you're going to get for now.
'Christmas On Earth' featured on Momus' 1993 album 'Timelord'. It was a strange time for Momus, and for music in general! Originally starting out as a wordy intellectual acoustic troubadour, by the early 90s Momus had adopted electronics and dance beats which made him sound not totally unlike The Pet Shop Boys....no bad thing, I should add.
Ever prolific and not one to hang about, 'Timelord' was Momus' fourth album since the start of the 90s, four albums in three years....not bad going.
'Timelord' was an intriguing album in that all of the songs seemed to be about travel of some kind. Travel not just through geography, but also through time, hence the albums title.
And the final track on the album is the one we are hear to talk about.
Eerie mechanical electronics usher us in, immediately suggesting this is no straight forward Christmas song! Momus then reveals that he is in a spaceship, light years away in the future but finding himself near midnight every day reminiscing about Christmas back on Earth, for one day in space is a whole year to the people back on Earth. There is obvious poignancy in the track for he reveals that, obviously, all his family, friends and loved ones will have long passed away, and that when he does one day return to Earth(if he ever does) all he will have left are memories kept on tape recordings.
A beautiful, glacial electronic paean to the [Griff: "Don't mention Proust!"] Proustian evocation of Christmases past.
Unfortunately I can't find a clip of the studio recording, but here is a fantastic, and rather rare live reading of the song from a show in 1993.


Here are the lyrics in full in case you couldn't make them out in the performance:

"Well I know that on Earth it is Christmas now
And I hope there'll be days in the snow
When I return many light years on
Though my friends will have died long ago
And the rain makes a sound like the asteroids
There are worlds made of ice in the clouds
I'm receiving transmissions they broadcast long ago
They remind me of things I have seen
All the people and cities and crowds
Ring the bells, ring the bells, ring them
Ring the bells, ring the bells, I can still hear them
Here on the way to the stars
About now back on earth it is Christmas time
There'll be logs in the grate, they will burn
I'm alone tape recording memories
For it all will have changed when I return
And the rain is so strange in the Milky Whey
I see cloudscapes of purple and green
Candleabras are shooting off firework displays
And I'm writing the things I have seen
People shopping and sparks from a train
Well I know that on Earth it is Christmas now
But in space time goes by so slow
At the speed of light one single night
Is a year to the people back home"
A beautiful song that will strike a chord with those who will spend this Christmas parted from their loved ones!

~Gordon~