Momus / Oskar Tennis Champion
Album: Oskar Tennis Champion   Collection:General
Artist:Momus   Added:May 2003
Label:Darla Records  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2003-06-16 Pull Date: 2003-08-18
Week Ending: Aug 24 Aug 10 Jul 20 Jul 13 Jul 6 Jun 29 Jun 22
Airplays: 1 1 1 1 2 3 1

Recent Airplay
1. Oct 28, 2017: Buford J. Sharkley Presents: As Told to Hervey Okkles
Spooky Kabuki
4. Aug 17, 2003: Oh Messy Life
The Last Communist
2. Sep 06, 2007: Fiction Romance
Multiply Love
5. Aug 07, 2003: Civil Society
Palm Deathtop
3. Aug 25, 2004: Civil Society
My Sperm Is Not Your Enemy / Oskar Tennis Champion
6. Jul 16, 2003: Arabian Nights
A Lapdog

Album Review
Gabe
Reviewed 2003-06-09
Momus is the master of eccentric lyrical directions and somewhat complex pop songs to act as transport for said lyrics. His singing is also dedicated to and suited for delivering the lyrics in a suitably mannered way. Thus, this is more a musical theater production soundtrack than a simple pop album. (The lyrics are online; URL provided inside. Lots of other great stuff there as well!) (By the way, Momus recently fled the U.S. to escape Bush and now resides in Japan, whose particular musical traditions and personalities - Cornelius, Kahimi Karie - influence a couple of tracks.) As I listened closely to this album to review it, I fell more and more deeply in thrall of the genius of Momus. Highly recommended!

1. Creaky, spooky, with Japanese accents
2. A song about being a love-starved, jilted pirate (but not a sea chantey)
3. Queasy waltz dedicated to promoting infidelity as a way to increase the supply of love
4. Wonderful, glitchy ditty asking a lover to love for a "good" reason - and to please ignore the Scottish lips
5. Oh my god! An ode to sperm, detailing its many properties and qualities. Again, the music is queasy and glitch-ridden
6. The centerpiece - an anti-modernism joke worthy of Jacques Tati (and mentioning him) delivered in an ironically modernist manner just as Tati did
7. German-language baroque-electro-glitch tribute to Franz Schubert
8. About a Scottish character - the narrator, how he was such a brilliant entertainer
9. New Wave song props up lyrics about "The Last Communist, alone in the Soviet Union"; perhaps the New Wave is a bit early 80s, where the end of the USSR was more late 80s; still, the setting of the reactionary and wistful lyrics to contemporaneous music is inspired
10. Lovelorn puppet (marionette) decries his owner's being more a puppet than he (the puppet) is
11. Holy cow; now a song from the viewpoint of Beowulf
12. Mechanical tune about mechanization
13. A bizarre, remorseful tune about exile to Antarctica with a lapdog, that also takes a whack at the irrelevance of the Situationists
14. Trees as figurative (very figurative) saviors; sad, cold tune
15. Using some "new vaporware" - Palm Deathtop - to track one's dead friends in a database until one joins them again
16. <Silence>
17. Blippy instrumental of some not inconsiderable duration

Track Listing
1. Spooky Kabuki   8. The Laird of Inversnecky
2. Is It Because I'm a Pirate?   9. The Last Communist
3. Multiply Love   10. Pierrot Lunaire
4. Scottish Lips   11. Beowulf(I Am Deformed)
5. My Sperm Is not Your Enemy   12. Electrosexual Sewing Machine
6. Oskar Tennis Champion   13. A Lapdog
7. A Little Schubert   14. Lovely Tree
  15. Palm Deathtop