Momus - Glyptothek - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Album Tracks 1. What's Your Take? 2. Car Crash Man 3. The Blond Beast 4. Randomness 5. Busted 6. Eat the Disease 7. Odradek 8. Mr Young Men 9. Beautiful When Angry 10. Situationship 11. The Kitchen 12. Quantum Strangeness 13. Anyone's Guess

Two CD set. Sixteen tracks were recorded in Paris in early spring, making this the first Parisian Momus album since 1995's The Philosophy of Momus. French pop naturally forms a backdrop to the songwriting, with echoes of the music hall of Charles Trenet, the chanson of Leo Ferre and Jacques Brel, and Megumi Satsu's Japanese takes on Topor lyrics in the 1980s. But there are also influences from Italian cinema - a tribute to Nino Rota, a song based on Japanese TV commercials featuring Marcello Mastroianni - and from Manchester groups like The Fall and New Order. Other tracks wink in the direction of John Barry, Disney, Eddie Cantor, the Ink Spots and Morris dancing. While many of these influences are retro, the album also reflects the concerns of 2024, with Putin menacing the West with threats of nuclear war and AI taking over people's jobs (there's even a song partly written by AI here). Album Tracks 1. Disk 1 Yikes! 2. 1. Codependency 3. 2. Becoming You 4. 3. Staring a Hole 5. 4. Before the War 6. 5. Waterspout 7. 6. Beautiful Human Life 8. 7. Sark E Myth 9. 8. Mondegreen 10. 9. Threnody 11. 10. Canterville 12. 11. Chthonian 13. 12. Nino Rota 14. 13. It's Impossible 15. 14. the Dinosaurs 16. 15. a Little Rain 17. 16. This Isn't Goodbye 18. Disk 2 20 Frisky Whiskies 19. 1. Murder in the Village 20. 2. Panathenian 21. 3. Make Way 22. 4. the European 23. 5. This Is the Place 24. 6. Midas 25. 7. British 26. 8. the Mosquito Song 27. 9. the Good Person of Sichuan 28. 10. Trump 29. 11. Garland 30. 12. F**k This Year 31. 13. Pure Selfishness 32. 14. Charm School 33. 15. My Rose 34. 16. I Cat My Hair 35. 17. the Stars Are Out 36. 18. Superstars of Bollywood 37. 19. Slippery Life 38. 20. Perfecto

The 37th Momus album started as a pre-election warning against the 47th US President in the form of a song called Orange Pills (Inchdon't swallow themInch being the take-away). Somehow the American electorate failed to listen and elected Trump anyway. The issue, for non-MAGA people, then became where to position oneself on a spectrum running from quietism to activism. It's a theme which bounces through Quietism, a quiet yet poppy album focused on the sound of a real acoustic guitar (the machine which Inchkills fascistsInch, as Woody Guthrie liked to say). One might want to reduce the idiotic noise of this world, to retreat into a privileged world of beauty and intelligence, to become an introvert or a recluse. But politics cannot be denied, even by a Paris-based aesthete. In a new take on the old cliché InchFirst they came for the quietists and I said nothing...Inch One tiny piece of aesthetic activism going on here is the choice of a South American musical idiom 1960s bossa nova, partly generated by 2020s AI tools which are North American. A secondary theme - very much related to the use of AI - is mimicry, and the dialectical tug between authenticity and the synthetic, human input and the impact of robotics. What's real, what's fake, and which of those - the mask or the supposed face beneath - gets us to a more interesting place? A filmic vocabulary appears there are continuity girls, spoiler alerts, actors whose props win Academy Awards. At the end the album presents it's human author with an imaginary medal, for this is his Inchimperial phaseInch - a double-edged sword representing both his own artistic zenith and a period in which the world is dominated by new empires, old oligarchs. Album Tracks 1. The Actor 2. Orange Pills 3 3. 30,000 Nights 4. My Apprentice Devil 5. Spoiler Alert 6. The Quietist 7. Noise Reduction 8. Trauma Bingo 9. Th