12 Days of Aniblogging 2019, Day 6Last year I set aside one of my posts for music instead of anime, writing about how Kero Kero Bonito’s album helped me cope with being a wreck of a person. I’m going to do the same this year, and I suppose every following year, to talk about the music that impacted me the most in those 12 months. This year, for better or for worse, it’s unquestionably the discography of Momus. Momus is a Scottish songwriter old enough to be your dad who has become something of a prolific outsider artist. He’s been making music since the mid-1980s and has kept a surprisingly steady output of about one album per year. From his art-pop demeanor to his willingness to appropriate any and every genre to his lyrical boundary-breaking, one can instantly tell how Momus has been inspired by Bowie from the very start. To me, Momus provides a sort of answer to the question of “what if Bowie had never taken off?” Languishing in relative obscurity with only occasional twinges of popularity, Momus has continued honing his songmaking craft throughout decades of monumental societal and technological change, embracing it all without fear. I began listening to Momus this January, reached the end of his discography in June, and kept going back to various albums throughout the year. I began this trek through a rather specific chain of events. First, while backlistening to a podcast I follow, I ran into an episode where the hosts discuss him and his music in detail. They describe a musician who intentionally tackles egregious and problematic subject in his songs, saved by the understanding that throughout his 30-year career, he has not done anything deeply problematic himself. A wholesome creep, as it were. Someone who is interested in the aesthetic value of creepiness and aims to catalyze it through album after album of music that is both intellectual and gaudy. I thought all of this was pretty interesting, but I didn’t end up trying him out as I had plenty of music in my queue already.And then word got out that one of the artists I was listening to was a pedophile. An artist who made overly cutesy and childish stuff too, so their entire discography was instantaneously poisoned by these revelations. Learning that an artist you follow is a terrible person always hurts, but it’s particularly painful when it’s an artist with a small following. There’s a lot less perceived distance between small artists and their fans when compared to large commercial artists, so having ever supported them felt like a strong moral failing, even though I couldn’t have known. So what’s a fraught consumer to do? Seek out the exact opposite of the artist that failed them, I guess. I thought back to Momus. Instead of making cutesy art while secretly being a very bad person, Momus makes art about very bad things while actually being a generally okay person. I downloaded Momus’ early albums and began my listen-through.The character study is one of Momus’ favorite tools. His first album, Circus Maximus, has him embodying ancient Christian and Roman figures such as John the Baptist Jones and Saint Sebastian, and his later albums continue the style with different subjects. Through this method, he writes from the perspectives of evil geniuses, hicks, murderers, decadent Thatcherites, orientalists, and other various creeps. But it’s not all depravity – Momus also investigates love, philosophy, contemporary culture, his literary favorites, and plenty of history. One of his greatest talents is the framing of it all – he portrays his themes with detached aestheticism, finding beauty in the terrible and queerness in the typical. He often reserves any particular judgement, leaving the audience to confront the messy ambiguity of his tableaus themselves. The message that often ends up bubbling through is one of pluralism – to respect what one doesn’t understand and tolerate otherness. Momus is absolutely not trying to convince you that the things depicted in his songs are okay, but he is asking that you consider the “why” behind them, even when it’s uncomfortable. When Momus does intend to send an overt message, it works to great effect, and his arguments are pleasantly righteous. His albums after 2016 have been tinged with political anger and calls to action, and songs like “Burning The Flag”, “Imperial”, and “Art and Design” are reassuring in that when push comes to shove, Momus thankfully makes powerful calls to resist fascism and institutional decay by any and all means necessary. It’s not like his previous work wasn’t political. Quite the opposite, in fact – while individual Momus songs are usually presented through a neutral narrator, the albums they belong to contain strong overarching messages. Many of his earlier works such as Tender Pervert and Don’t Stop the Night are total rebukes of the conservative 80’s UK, displaying the debauchery and abuse of the upper class as well as the fear and suffering of the marginalized. But these interpretations, while author-intended, are extratextual, so it’s good to know that he can be literal when he deems it necessary too.Part of respecting diversity in perspectives is embracing change, such as the passage of time and the shifting of trends. It is here where Momus revels. He loves contemporary culture and makes pastiches of popular music of the time, he embraces new technologies and got on the Internet as soon as it started, and he never sticks with a style for too long, always reinventing himself after an album or two. Amidst all of this change, he certainly has his hits and misses, but his batting average is surprisingly high for how many different styles he tries out on a whim. Momus has lived a storied life, bouncing between London, France, New York, and Osaka throughout the years. He’s written books, published for fashion magazines, and often publishes vlogs about his experiences and thoughts for all to see on Youtube. Through these nonmusical elements of him, too, we can see how he takes that pluralism and respect for many experiences to heart. Momus isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He’s had his missteps and songs where he’s arguably gone too far or gotten too sympathetic. But he doesn’t try to hide those parts away, and has even released songs throughout his career that critique and update earlier ones, tracing a progression of his opinions and beliefs. Momus’ discography is hefty, inconsistent in quality at times, and not always the most enjoyable subject matter, but I’ve you’ve made it this far in the essay, I’d strongly recommend you try out some of his work and see what you think of it. It was a good exercise in expanding my palate and also coming to terms with different kinds of Problematic Art. For the record, my favorite albums are The Philosophy of Momus and Folktronic – but I’d recommend starting from the beginning at Circus Maximus!
Dec 19, 2019 • Subscribe
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