230: Momus // Tender Pervert
Tender Pervert
Momus
1988, Creation
Momus appears on the cover of his best-known album Tender Pervert somewhat effetely flaunting a pair of devil horns, an apt set-up for the record’s contents. His persona hearkens back to a time when the most satanic thing polite society could imagine was a flamboyant man of aristocratic bearing making cutting remarks in a drawing room with a harpsicord in it, and at the microphone he fairly oozes amoral sensuality. Though he declares himself to be straight with the frequency of someone who gets asked a lot, much of Tender Pervert pokes at the world’s discomfort with homosexuality: his characters are raised to be gay and feel they’ve lost face when they turn out hetero; use the intimate access purchased by their superficial effeminacy to bed married women; endure childhood abuse by male priests only to become themselves lifelong “appreciators” of youth. It’s often difficult to pin down Momus’s own moral and political values, whether he takes pleasure in real transgression or merely the delicious discomfort that singing about it brings to a square audience.
Tender Pervert makes a few overtures to the synth pop of its day (e.g. “A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy [Parts 17–24]”), but more often than not the songs are little more than a baroque-style keyboard line and a drum machine, a sophisticated but minimalist backdrop for the featured wordplay. Like his acolyte Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), Momus is louche, actorly in his phrasing, creeping along the bars like a cat stretching its back and flexing its claws. He seems unwilling to write or uninterested in writing a song where the melody looms larger than the lyrics, though the few tunes that threaten to (such as “Ice King”) suggest he could’ve paid the bills with some truly immaculate pop songs if he’d so chosen. His albums might go down a little sweeter with more of that sort of thing, but you can find good pop anywhere. Where else will you find a record that opens with a song that describes God getting a hardon from watching human depravity, and closes with His angels ejaculating new Milky Ways?
230/365
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they must be putting coke in this song because I can't go a day without it.
also literally Masoch core
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