MOREMOMUSMONDAY

Momus aka Nicholas Currie has featured here a couple of times before, but never with a dedicated selection. 

I had the honour of presenting a Momus collection as part of the Imaginary Compilation Album series over at The Vinyl Villain in November 2022. I sidestepped the difficult task of selecting songs from Momus' vast back catalogue by only focusing on then-current album Smudger and the three albums that preceded it. 

 

To underline the point that Momus is so prolific, in the time it took me to curate the ICA and write about it, another album was on the way, his second of that year.

This time around, I've gone for broke and selected 11 songs spanning five decades from the 1980s to 2024, which again has seen two albums so far. Yikes! came out in March, 16-track collection of new songs, including the brilliantly-titled Sark E Myth. 

 

Before that, January saw 20 Frisky Whiskies, a follow up to the 1996 compilation 20 Vodka Jellies. This one collects remakes, outtakes and misshapes from the last two decades which didn't make it onto the many, many Momus albums in that period. No barrel scraping exercise, this.

Not a platinum-selling artist perhaps, but Momus has consistently mined a rich seam of narrative and musical gold. This selection includes one of dozens of David Bowie songs that Momus has covered, Where Are We Now? being particularly notable for being recorded and released the day after Bowie's surprise release of the song in 2014.

Mistaken Memories Of Medieval Manhattan is also a comparative Momus rarity, one of five songs that Nick wrote and demo'd for Japanese artist Kahimi Karie in 1999. Karie recorded and released them as an EP, Journey To The Centre Of Me, the following year.

Fuck This Year, from this year's 20 Frisky Whiskies compilation, was recorded in 2016 but seems as much a statement for the first six months of 2024 in the UK as any, immersed as we are in the chaos of a general election (and a football tournament, if you are so inclined). 

The imaginary C90 side will have run out of spooling tape before the end but I'm happy with how this one turned out. If you like what you hear, there are literally hundreds more songs where that came from....!

 

1) My Sperm Is Not Your Enemy (Edit) (2003)

2) Where Are We Now? (Studio Version) (Cover of David Bowie) (2014)

3) In The Sanatorium (1988)

4) Mistaken Memories Of Medieval Manhattan (1999)

5) Fuck This Year (2016)

6) Disappear (2022)

7) Loneliness (2019)

8) Trans Siberian Express (1992)

9) Closer To You (1987)

10) It's Impossible (2024)

11) Suicide Pact (1993) 

 

1987: The Poison Boyfriend: 9

1988: Tender Pervert: 3

1992: Voyager: 8

1993: Timelord: 11

1999: The Progressive Demos EP: 4

2003: Oskar Tennis Champion: 1

2014: An Evening With Dybbuk Momie (Studio Versions): 2 

2019: Akkordion: 7

2022: Smudger: 6

2024: Yikes!: 10

2024: 20 Frisky Whiskies: 5

MOREMOMUSMONDAY (47:45) (KF) (Mega)

 

And if you enjoyed that....

 

A Ripped And Wrinkled Life: A Momus ICA (40:41) (KF) (Mega)

Fuck this year, fuck this pain
Things will never be good again
Fuck this year with a sawn-off brick
Fuck this year, it makes me sick
Fuck this year with the sizzle of death
Fuck it 'til its final breath

Fuck this year from the bottom to the top
Fuck this year until it drops
Fuck this year of the gibbering creeps
Fuck this year until it weeps

Well fuck this year, this horrible corpse
Fuck its scuttling cockroach walk
Fuck this year with its gibbering lies
Fuck this year until it dies

Fuck this harvest, fuck this toll
Fuck these people who have no soul
Well fuck this world in a wobbling fall
Fuck this year, the worst of all, well

Fuck this populist oligarchy
Stop hacking in and stop spying on me
Fuck the leaders and fuck their sheep
Fuck the whole rusty scrapheap

Fuck this year, yes, that's the gist
Bum this year with a buggering fist
Well bugger this year with a Christmas log
Shove this year in a gulping bog

Melt this year like candlewax
Before something even worse attacks
Fuck your Brexit, fuck your Trump
They stink worse than the spunk of a skunk

Fuck this year with a killer fist
Make this year unexist
All things nice, sugar and spice
All things nice, sugar and spice
Be taken away from my enemy
Fuck this year from me

Fuck your side, you were wrong
We were right, you'll find out
When it's too late
The year of hate

Fuck this year, this horrible corpse
Fuck its scuttling cockroach walk
Fuck this world in a wobbling fall
Fuck this year, the worst of all