Thought For The Day
How To Write A Momus Review
(in three easy lessons)

Lesson One: The Stinker (or 'Clunker')

Hip(ish) young(ish) mudslinger Rob McMurdo reviews Stars Forever by Momus. (If he can keep up this standard we're going to offer him the editorship of a football/style crossover title in a couple of years...)

Mo' Musical Express
August 32nd, 1999

Momus
Stars Forever (Analog Baroque, double CD)

Momus -- AKA Nick Currie, obscure, ugly, fat and fortyish indiekid of this parish -- is a veteran of no-fi synthpop whose cheap and cheesy records have bankrupted many a once-credible British indie label: Postcard, el, 4AD and Creation.

So it's no surprise that, thanks to a typically gross, lewd and libellous song on his last album, The Little Red Songbook, Momus recently brought his US label Le Grand Magistery to its knees.

To save his skin and rescue his unfortunate label, Momus decided to make an album of portrait songs, priced at a cool thousand dollars a pop. Thirty gullible souls from all over the world jumped at the opportunity to bathe in the reflected limelight of Momus's total obscurity and become (snurf snurf) 'stars forever'.

Momus is allegedly 'big in Japan' (ho ho ho), where he's written multi-platinum bubblegum hits in the Pedophile Pop genre for singers like Kahimi Karie. What the slit-eyed babes who consume such trash don't seem to realise is that Momus, if not actually xenophobic, is certainly the biggest sexist this side of Charles Manson, and could teach Genesis P.Orridge a thing or two about sexual perversion (nudge nudge).

His attempts to be nice about people this time around are transparently thin and clearly motivated only by the money. As he sings the praises of thirty suckers across this mind-numbingly tedious two CD set, it becomes clear that the arch old misanthropist and longtime enemy of this music paper has his tongue firmly in his cheek even while it's lodged deep in his clients' bottoms.

As usual for the man they used to call 'the third Pet Shop Boy' (sneery wink) Stars Forever marries a disco thump to show tunes, toytown techno and electro-vaudeville waltzes. The album contains several nauseatingly homosexual odes, interspersed with the usual Lenny Bruce-like litany of totally unshocking four letter words. In the electronic sea shanty "Steven Zeeland" Momus boasts of a sordid liason with a sailor, proclaiming his intetion to 'come in his ass with my tongue down his neck... '. Another song typical of the lyrical guff to be found on this record proclaims 'Holly Golightly and Tinkerbell are multicultural but they don't exist'.

Whereas The Who punctuated their 1968 album The Who Sell Out with amusing fake advertisements, Momus, master ironist that he is, sells out for real, kicking off Stars Forever with a paid advertisement for New York record store Other Music. The song fades after the contractual two minutes with the adolescent refrain 'f***k music, s***k music'. As ever, Naughty Nick isn't slow in earning his much-coveted Parental Advisory sticker.... though it's safe to say that Eminem is probably not trembling in his Nikes. The whole thing comes across as the great lost album by high concept '80s losers Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

Of course, it may well be that Momus is jumping onto the 80s revival bandwagon alongside Les Rhythmes Digitales. How else to explain the cringeworthy ode to King Of Kitsch Jeff Koons, or the fact that the whole record seems to be played on cheesy Casios and consist of sticky tributes to Japanese girls and their cute pink computers?

Being an 'intellectual', Momus naturally has a 'concept' to cover up the sub-lo-fi shoddiness of his music. He calls it Analog Baroque. Thus we get the usual electronic waltzes, polkas and jigs, plus a few sleeve pictures of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Long John Silver. Someone should tell the Old Romantic that his Adam Ant impersonation is a few buckles short of the full swash.

Analog Baroque is also the name of Momus's new label, a front for his real home, Cherry Red Records, Britain's least hip label, known for its motley collection of prematurely-deceased wrist-slashing types and long- forgotten Oi bands. Momus promises a series of releases by the likes of Gary Numan-loving frog Toog, camp Berliners Stereo Total, and jism-spurting New York pervert Mr Swenson. We can't wait.

Next time you're on holiday in Paris and some gay Frenchman starts chatting up your girlfriend while making a supposedly-hilarious, ludicrously overpriced 'portrait' of you as a comedy skunk while his mate plays a medley of harpsichord hits from the year 1599 on a Moog, you'll know who to blame.

Rob McMurdo

PS: Order your MME Glastonbury limited edition wellington boots now, hip young mudslingers!

Next: The Corker... Dave Documento in Momo Magazine!

NME Hypocrisy Competition!

Okay, hippish youngish muckrakers, what's wrong with this NME cover? Is it:

a) The fact that they haven't had a black rap artist (remember, the people who invented it?) on the cover in years?

b) The fact that they're trying to sell papers with the same rude words they regularily condemn if they appear in the works of small independent artists like Momus?

c) The fact that asterisks ARE censorship!

Ass****s!

PS: Great album, Mr Shady!

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