Momus: "Precocious Young Miss Calloway"

Tona Serenad continue their campaign of old gramophone experiments with Momus: a philosophical Scotsman and former Wired journalist, and a man whose CV highlights include “Hairstyle of the Devil” and being sued by Wendy Carlos for a song about transgender time travel. Somehow, he got in tow with John Henriksson, and decided that hazy, crackling, 1950s circus noise is exactly the hypo his career’s been waiting for. He’s right, of course, and as Henriksson leads him down the road he himself colonized—mining Sweden for 1880s Edison cylinder music, then getting the perpetrators down on wax and wrapping them in hand-drawn cover art—it feels like a genuine rebirth. Despite their short time together The Thunderclown is a strong first EP, and if Wendy Carlos wants to sue them for this she’ll have to cite “cryptic subliminal sex talk used as lyrics” in her opening statement. And Wendy, a jury won’t swallow that, not even if you did soundtrack the original Tron.

His first appearance on vinyl since 1993, “Precocious Young Miss Calloway” is Momus as blue and decontextualised as he’s ever been, but drawing deep from his subconscious thanks to Henriksson’s childlike accompaniment. “Precocious young Miss Calloway / Impressed a person’s pants away / With clever conversation studied from a magazine / And a blackguard known to all and sundry / As a humble understudy / Challenged a great actor for his hatred of the Queen”—so begins his cheerful recount of a rascal who works in the circus, skipping around and robbing stage hands of their virginity. It might a strange subject to seem fit for nursery rhyme but this is a man who wears an eyepatch, for Christ’s sake; a man who knows you only have to hold one melody to bury songs in the listener. If you can do it on a strange old collection of wooden, semi-valuable instruments, even better. Antique dealers, it’s time to let your hair down.