Pitchfork reviews the new Momus album

>Pitchforkmedia.com reviews the new Momus record, Oskar Tennis Champion. Any thoughts?

All's fair in love and journalism, but that doesn't mean all is factually correct. I like Pitchfork because they review at length and intelligently, and I'm glad Oskar got reviewed there. However, to quote the reviewer out of context, 'I'm not that generous.' He's also not that factual:

>a lost lawsuit over a song about Wendy Carlos.

The Carlos case was not lost but settled out of court. The judge refused even to issue an injunction on the record.

>Written and recorded in Japan... the CD takes no inspiration from its surroundings.

Not true. Not only are there several tracks in the fake oriental 'spooky kabuki' style, there are also recordings of Japanese street cryers recorded from my window mixed into songs like 'The Laird of Inversnecky'. There are also songs written for Japanese artists, like Pierrot Lunaire, made for Emi Necozawa. The record is, de facto, 'Nakame-kei', just like the latest Cornelius. It goes, literally, 'from Nakameguro to everywhere' and it has that fragmented, magpie Tokyo feel.

>Song after song, Currie's trademarked sick wit is nowhere to be found.

'Humourless' is in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of slapstick and macabre black humour throughout Oskar, as much in John's cut-ups as my lyrics.

>"Electrosexual Sawing Machine"

There's no track called that on the album.

I'm glad Mr Idov likes "Trans-Siberian Express", but to say:

>That was old Momus, I guess, unencumbered by tabloid infamy and money concerns.

is again simply untrue. The guy who wrote that song was much more tied up in tabloid infamy and money concerns than the guy in Tokyo making 'Oskar', who, rather than romping with teens, was trying to get through the death of a close friend and the end of a relationship. If the fun on Oskar sounds somewhat anxious, that's why.

>The new Momus is the kind of guy who stoops to include a minute of silence as the 16th track on this disc and titles it "A Minute of Silence".

Simply not true. The gap track is not titled 'A Minute of Silence' either on the album or on the website. I don't know where Mr Idov got this idea, but to use it as evidence of my lame sense of humour is absurd.

>If that's not enough, he follows it up with an instrumental reprise of the album's second track-- rendered in telephone ringtones! Oh, the fun!

Adam Bruneau, the 'he' in fact resposible for The Ringtone Cycle, reprises not one but six of the album's tracks. Wrong again! This is getting ridiculous, how many facts can you fail to check in one piece?

>awfulness has always been a part of Momus' gambit.

Who sets out to be awful? With Oskar as with all my projects, I set out to entertain and to stimulate. But pop music is communication, and it takes two to make a successful act of communication. A bad review is as much a confessional commentary on the writer's inability to do his part of the imaginative work. That's fine, no work of art can compel acceptance. What's not so cool is when spurious and incorrect 'facts' are marshalled to make the confession look more objective.

>his laboriously cultivated image of a postmodern ponce is binding and irreversible.

Words which will have to be eaten when Pitchfork reviews the 2004 release, 'Summerisle', on which the 'powdered wig ponce' persona is stunningly absent (as he is on at least half the tracks on every Momus album except perhaps 'The Little Red Songbook').

I like Pitchfork and I hope they continue to review my records, though with a bit more respect for fact.

>>>Song after song, Currie's trademarked sick wit is nowhere to be found.
>'Humorless' is in the eye of the beholder.

Your point is accurate, but are reviwers only to report on observable facts? ("This record features instruments and vocals.") You cite stuff you found witty, and others might; the reviewer thought you weren't as witty as you've been elsewhere. That's not a "factual error."

I felt for you when I read that review, really I did; I take bad reviews really, really badly, it's why I only ever review records I like. But come on, now. The fact that somebody didn't think your jokes were funny doesn't mean they didn't hear where the jokes were.

Isn't that what you are ultimately aiming for, tiger?

Please leave the critic crap to the critic. And keep the artist crap to the artist.

Don't get me wrong. I love pirates.

Sounds like 99% of the reviews I read...

3 out of 9 = 50%? (4 out of 9 if I'm feeling generous)

he's not saying you did this, he's saying you're the TYPE of guy who'd do this (in his admittedly wrong-headeed opinion). See LL Cool J's "I'm The Type Of Guy" for further explanation of this device.

Yet, does that mean there isn't a good way to do this?

I may buy this album for comparison purposes, as the one Momus album I have is very early Momus. I like it a lot.

"I like any publication people dismiss as 'trendy'. I also like mags to get their facts wrong, because wrong facts lead towards fiction, parallel worlds and unreliable narration. So I'm with Nitsuh on the point that this thread has actually enhanced Pitchfork's status. It makes it a 'passionate subject', somewhat transgressive and divisive.

-- Momus, November 23rd, 2002.

Well, the album you want to hear, Mickey, was made available in its entirety on my blog before being released by record labels, on a voluntary donation basis. The mp3s are no longer up there, because the moment I signed contracts with the labels, I would have been infringing them by giving the record away free, gratis and for nothing.

Anyway, if anyone wants to see a video of one of the tracks on the forthcoming album, Frilly Military is online. Takes a while to load. It's from the poppy end of the record.

Thomas: doesn't what you're saying amount to "I believe in the concept of artistic growth, therefore I find it everywhere I look"? How would you say growth manifests itself?

Momus, I agree. People are beholden to their circumstances. That's how it goes, doesn't it?

By the way, I like that song in the video.

contact us when you can.

Mickey, if you don't want to be treated like a felon all your life, please stop acting like one.

Derek          Borchardt   Derek 
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          
Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          

'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt  Derek      Derek   
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt    Derek    Derek   
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt      Derek  Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt       Derek Derek'Mickey'  

In almost innumerable ways! I don't think "stagnation" is really even possible - if there's any really pernicious myth in criticism, it's that it's even possible to say the same thing twice: how can it even be the same thing, if it's already been said? It can't; it's repetition at that point, which is a speech-act of an entirely different order, and is to me a pretty interesting one - most of my favorite artists repeat themselves, and I'd say they do so precisely to hear how the thing being repeated turns out not to be the "same thing" at all, but to sort of open up onto other areas all by itself under the weight of repetition. I know this is all up-my-own-ass theory territory & vulnerable to the "it's pop music, not HIGH ART" but what can I say, it's interesting to me: I think growth is inherent in all processes, even decay is growth - I'm almost always more interested in the work of an artist who's said to have already peaked, not in the heavily mythologized/romanticized "early & hungry" model that pervades rock thinking.

One example of how growth manifests itself artistically is when the artist turns inward, which, when it happens in rock or rock-related musics (i.e. pop, not actually as distinct from rock as we tend to say around here), people tend to dismiss, often on grounds such as those cited above (not "hungry" any more, "repeating him/herself," etc). In most other fields of art, though, artists who "peak" early are quite rare; artists tend to do their best work once they've actually mastered the rudiments of craft. Rock/pop thinking has this privileging of inexperience that ends up equating competence with stagnation, and I think that's kinda bogus. But all these are just on-the-fly thoughts & I'm open to correction, it's not like I think I've got all this doped out; I'm just very suspicious of a model for criticism that I think often sounds phoned-in & over-reliant on some pretty suspect cultural cues.

I'll think about this some more in the morning.

So, I think "growth" is valid also. The human soul, reflected in art, grows too, but not as much when there are ... blockages.

the thought of dj spooky actually sitting down one day to write an autobiography makes me want to befoul myself.

1) Sign up for a free radio station at a place like Pandora or Last.fm or Launchcast. If you plug in, say, Momus, that artist will get lots of airplay on your 'station'. This is how I discover new music.

2) It doesn't cost that much to download tracks from pay services like emusic - much cheaper than itunes and much easier than p2p.

3) Retail places like Amazon, and info sites like Allmusic often have sample clips as well.

No, I am not a shill, but I can't believe that people are still having trouble finding 'what something sounds like' in this day and age.

By the way, I just remembered, there's a song on my new album called "Dr Cat" whose chorus sets the Pitchfork rating system to music, but ranking friends instead of records:

Essential and spectacular incredible friends
Exceptional; will rank amongst my all-time ten
Very good, above average; enjoyable friends
Not that brilliant, but I know we'll meet again