How's my singing? (Your mileage may vary.)

[imomus]

Being a bit of a fan of ambivalence -- that Janus-like state in which our reactions face in two directions at the same time, which means it has something in common with collaboration -- I rather enjoy nuanced reviews of my work. Outright pan or praise doesn't feel right, fair or accurate, somehow. All-good or all-bad is bound to be a lie.

So I enjoyed the mixed Joemus review in Brooklyn mag Prefix, which begins: "Nick Currie, who records as Momus, has spent much of his career treading some uncleansed middle ground between the irksome and the inspired". This review, which awards the record seven out of ten, leans to the "inspired" side but doesn't lose sight of failings, calling me on naff techniques and half-finished songs.



The review sees a natural pop singer with a "lopsided canon" thwarted by conceptual baggage and production tricks, but believes that "as soon as we’ve hit rock bottom we’re pulled up by our bootstraps". Almost every sentence has this ambivalent structure, as if to say "Although this record is pretty terrible, it's actually pretty good in the end". Of the work with Joe, for instance: "Occasionally the collaboration between these two disparate workers doesn’t gel... but it’s gratifying to hear how often they hit paydirt". Like The Vaudevillian in the final track, I'm "leaving the audience not knowing whether to applaud or call the emergency services".

Since many of you now have your copies of Joemus, I thought it might be time to issue a "how's my driving?" heads-up and a tollfree number. So how are you getting on with this album? Any juicy ambivalence to share? Tracks you skip, tracks you love, tracks on repeat? Are we talking curate's egg or Fabergé? Stinker or swimmer? Is Joemus the fourth worst of the twenty Momus albums, or the third best? A mixed bag or a nickelbag of funk? Jammus maximus or Janusbait? The lines are open.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's up there.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Widow Twanky and Thatness & Thereness are both tracks I absolutely love.

a lot of the vocals you've chosen to subtly distort and digitize in an attempt to add a sense of 'wrongness' as you'd put it, and it reminded me of quite advanced singing synthesis technology Yahama has recently released called Vocaloid (http://www.vocaloid.com/).

Voice sysnthethis is reaching that 'uncanny valley' stage, but it's not quite there, and your album evokes a lot of that.

The Japanese artist Gackt joined up with Yahama to create a Gackt vocal synthesis product that consumers can buy to create their own homemade Gackt tracks. Both of these tracks use Gackt's vocal synthesis software:



A lot of what I heard of your album sounds like what I'd expect people to make if they could buy 'Momus in a box' vocaloid software from Yamaha.

[(Anonymous)]

nice avoidance of the question there!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Still looking forward to it. Have been a bit out of the Momus loop. I didn't even listen to what I skimmingly assumed were samples therefrom, because I thought this time I'd like there to be as much surprise as possible.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a review -- I don't own the album. Everything I've heard has either been uploaded by Momus or other people (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy9ni-KDG4U), and the rest of the tracks I heard samples of on Amazon.

I've only heard about half the album in full, it wouldn't be fair to make a judgment. I've heard Thatness and Thereness and Widow Twanky in full and both are excellent tracks.

[bennycornelius.livejournal.com]

My copy hasn't arrived yet. I'm attending a seminar being held by the Bristol Momus Society (we need a catchier title!) at which the two of us (alright it's early days, but the other one of us is a Star Forever) are going to listen to the record and chat after each track. I've rather ruined things by sneaking listens to Proctor, Jahwise (both pretty good) etc. I'm hoping to be pleasantly wrongfooted, like I've been so many times in the past ... perhaps most noticeably by Otto Spooky.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Pleasantly wrongfooted" contains just the sort of ambivalence I was fishing for, thank you!

Good luck with the society and say hi to Maf!

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Is that toilet paper?

I haven't bought it yet, but I'll have a look in town today.

[(Anonymous)]

Joemus is pretty brilliant because most of it is so infatuating.
I'll sing 'Widow Twanky' in the shower (complete with falsettoised, very bad Scottish accent: 'Un' called yeh stupid cuuuuuowww')
I'll usually listen to the more upbeat tracks while walking to work, and play the more trad tracks while milling around the house, cleaning and so forth. The only track I really skip with any consistently is 'Dracula' because it doesn't really fit into either category. It's a great premise for a song rather than a great song. I think the female vocals can be a bit difficult to understand, so a more casual listener might be a little put off by the delivery. But it's only a minor criticism. I like it. I do regularly listen to the album as a cohesive piece anyway and if I am doing so, I don't skip tracks. There's nothing totally totally awful there at all, whereas thinking about it, on every other newly released studio album I've bought this year (five, including yours) I have pressed the skip button on at least one track.
When walking to work, I'll favour the more upbeat tracks (Mr Proctor, Ichabod Crane, Jahwise Hammer)

James

[bennycornelius.livejournal.com]

It's someone more gay and discreet than Maf...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Whoops, Miles, of course! Hi Miles!

And thanks, James, I am heart-warmed on a windy day in Vienna.

The trouble with small and obcure

[(Anonymous)]

Hhmmmmm don't think so. I haven't seen any album download links anywhere yet. No torrents, what gives. It's not like you buy albums, why should we?

[drywbach.livejournal.com]

I still don't have, and even when I do, it'll take a good while for me to figure out how I feel about everything. It usually does. By then you'll probably be well into a new project, so...

It took me a long time to warm to Mr Proctor (Hieronymus?) -- there's a lot going on, and it felt disorienting for the first few listens, if that makes any sense -- and such a short time to love eerie, dreamlike Widow Twanky that I found myself wondering why there aren't more songs about pantomime dames in the world. I haven't figured out how I feel about Jahwise Hammer yet. The track I'm most looking forward to hearing (because of the lyric) is The Vaudevillian.

So far, Widow Twanky and Dracula are my favourite tracks, and Dracula may have a slight edge. I don't have the vocabulary to describe what's happening musically in those tracks that's so appealing to me, but in Dracula, for example, I enjoy the way the music heightens the tension between the characters. Lyrically, I've been enjoying it for the unfashionably unsexy vampire and the assertive would-be "victim". It feels like a humorous, anti-erotic inversion of "death and the maiden" type songs (or whatever you'd call them -- "Don't Fear the Reaper", "Joan of Arc", the Leonard Cohen one, I mean). It still ends with a shiver, though, before going off into "pa-pa-pa".

If anything, I'd have liked to hear more of your voice unaltered on the original tracks.

By the way, I can see how it may be easier to enjoy a nuanced but largely positive review; the compliments are more pleasant for the fact that they're considered -- but wouldn't a similar negative one be worse than mindless panning? I.e. they've actually given it some thought and they still hate it?

Indescretion

[(Anonymous)]

My copy is taking an age to arrive from Cherry Red, I was looking to see if they sold a download but alas it appears not. Have purposefully avoided samples etc as I want to enjoy and/or endure Joemus as a whole in one sitting.

yours indescreetly and slightly less gayly

Maf

ps. We have two and half members of the Brighton Momus Appreciation Society

Re: Indescretion

[(Anonymous)]

Howdy all.

My copy is similarly late arriving from Cherry Red, grr, but as my pal bennycornelius has already suggested it will given a suitably respectful listening by we two when it does, and on a brand spanking new hi-fi to boot, which I need to cover in cling film on account of Ben's fetishisation of quality electronics.

And no gunning down mid song, since Maf will be Brighton way.

Miles

[(Anonymous)]

Not being in possession of a copy of Joemus, but having heard certain songs online, i think i am most drawn to the Cooper of Fife, having myself gone to school in Cupar, Fife.
Also, Mr Proctor is unfeasibly catchy, but nigh-on impossible to sing in the shower/while cycling/at all.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Make a video in which you're dancing. I want my money's worth!

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

I was listening to Joemus very softly in my office yesterday. Students were coming in and out for conferences. Two students asked me to turn it off, because it distracted them from their papers (they would probably have said this about Percy Faith Orchestra, as well); one student asked me to turn it up, because she really liked "The Next Time"; and another student asked me what that guy was saying on "Ichabod Crane" besides "ICHABOD CRAANE!"

Of course the record's good. Sometimes, as with the "O Trilogy," the distortion and bitcrushingis more interesting in theory than practice. It's like a truly deconstructive text: as a Form, compelling, as an actual text, unreadable.

I think I wrote this in a review of Ocky Milk, which was (melodically, at least) a much stronger album: vocals, vocals, vocals. I enjoy the distorted/AutoTune'd bits: mostly they work with the grain of the song, not against it. However, "Ichabod Crane," "Strewf!", and (especially) "Dracula" suffer from the distortion. This is especially tragic with "Dracula," as it had the potential to be a very funny, very beautifully-arranged pop-hörspiel.

I downloaded Ocky Milk from eMusic, and expected a little bit of muddiness in the files. Not wanting to experience the same thing, I dragged myself to Amoeba and bought one of their two copies of Joemus. Still relatively muddy. The weird thing is, Oskar and Otto don't seem to me to have this problem. Why is that?

[(Anonymous)]

in response to: The weird thing is, Oskar and Otto don't seem to me to have this problem. Why is that?

Risking the obvious chance of sounding completely full of myself (oh well, don't care)...I would say the reason with little doubt is, well, me. I spent a lot of time and thought into working out the kinks in the finished sound on many varied speakers and equipment to make it sound as good as I possibly could no matter what people would listen to it on, format included. OCD has also led me to building a large amount of exotic electronics from scratch as well no doubt.
-John Flesh

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

I can understand your desire to get feedback on Joemus but it would seem that most of your regular readers/listeners haven't got around to purchasing a copy yet.
I hope you do a similar post to this in a month or so as I'm sure the response volume will be of more value than these early impressions.
For what it's worth I certainly very much like what I've heard but it will probably be another week before I have my copy and I like to live with a cd for a few days before I formulate an opinion on it.

[(Anonymous)]

Waiting on my copy. I will give you my impressions as soon as it has sunk in. I love "Thatness and Thereness" so that will be the one to beat.

Richard

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, this conversation has taken an interesting turn!

I may have tin ears, but I don't notice any kind of flatness or muddiness in Joemus. There are bits of Dracula that overload (the thunder) and one moment on the bridge in Widow Twanky that peaks and clips, but apart from that I think it sounds dandy.

What I do notice, though, is that my favourite way to listen to Joemus is on the in-built speakers in my iMac. Through the lowest of my lofi set ups, in other words, with everything concentrated on the treble. The 8-bit like sounds really shoot out, with no bass to muddy them.

So on systems that really whack the bass out, big expensive systems (like my new one!), it may sound muddy simply because when I recorded the album I was pretty much unable to hear a lot of the bottom end.

I actually got a letter from Rusty Santos, who recorded Ocky Milk, commending me for getting the new system, because he thinks it's scandalous how I disregard the bass frequencies in my recordings. And sometimes it is: in the mix of Dracula that made it onto the album, I was playing Joe Howe files randomly into the mix, and some of them have huge random bass in them, and I simply wasn't hearing it during the recording because the speakers were too small. (That said, I quite like the randomness of it now.) Also, at the end of Jahwise the level drops on an edit to a drum tattoo (the very end), and I just couldn't boost that enough to give it the impact it needed. Later, I realised it was because the bass was massive, hogging all the bandwidth. But I simply wasn't hearing it when I made the edit. But again, I sort of don't mind the end result. It drops in level at that point, but it becomes Ariel Pink-style "random mixing". And what I love about Ariel Pink is the way he makes "wrong" mix decisions sound so right.

I do thank John for his excellent sound design on the O records -- I think he's a sound genius. But I also think Joe did a great job, and in some cases struggled with me to replace mixes I liked with bigger, better-sounding mixes he liked, and -- thankfully -- won.

[(Anonymous)]

Second ever comment from a long time reader: I don't care for "The Next Time" -- I'm unable to hear how that song stands apart as an exceptional standard, and am as well unable to tell anything fresh about it (sounds like Cornelius's version of "Sleep Warm," but not as pleasing, and autotune's novelty has more than warn off by now for me).

But. That's out of the way. I think the rest is really great. Esp. the first two songs, and then "The Cooper o' Fife" and "Strewf!" I have to give the image/comparison trick to one track: "Widow Twanky" is like a Prefab Sprout acid bath [corrosive acid, not hallucinogenic]. Love the pitch trick on the backing vocals of "Birocracy." (Ever heard Godley & Creme's "I Pity Inanimate Objects"?)

Actually, my only other critical comment right now is that I think "Dracula" gets derailed before it finishes. It should have maintained that drowsy dreaminess.

Yes yes, though, Joemus will be getting lots of play, and its overall exceptional nature will also inspire some more relistens to a batch of recent Momus albums, for some refreshing. I'll also go listen to Germlin now.

-Spencer

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Why in the world is the bass the most singular important aspect of a recording? The obsession of bass is rockism!... Yeah...

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

I completely understand this as an aesthetic choice, but I still stand by the original comment. I like that Ariel Pink sound as well, but when it draws away from lyrical content or drowns out musical figures, it can be irksome.

For the record, I've listened to Joemus on the horrible little harman/kardon speakers plugged into my MacBook, the built-in monitor speakers on the Dell they remaindered us on campus (even worse), and the really pretty keen 1970s setup I have in my living room.

Maybe I'm going deaf (it runs in the family), or I don't have the chops to keep up with the new sound (d)evolution!