Since the 1980s, Momus has been the recording guise of Scotsman bon vivant Nick Currie, a man of many masks and endless curiosity. Currie has been in swift succession the poison boyfriend, the tender pervert, the Hippopotamomus, a pop maven in Japan, an electro-Baroque composer in the wake of Wendy Carlos, an electro-folk musician (the Harry Smith of Nintendo, if you will), a current Berlin blogger for the New York Times ("on design and society"), and, most recently, according to his own account, an "electronic vaudevillian."
Joemus finds him collaborating with Joe Howe, the Glasgow breakbeat manipulator behind Germlin and Gay Against You. Howe here plays the same role Currie assigned to Fashion Flesh for his three previous records: adding several layers of distortion and assorted digital wobbling to the singer's urbane chansons. As in that recent trilogy, the results are mixed, though the usual lyrical puns and jokes have given way to Kool Keith–style nonsense ("Mr. Proctor") and a very noticeable melancholy.
The one track where Momus doesn't hide behind the lo-tech electro wizardry of his collaborator, the possibly unironic "The Man You'll Never Be," reminds us of his deserved reputation as a master of traditional song form, a cosmopolitan Stephin Merritt. That track leads into the West End mimicry of "The Vaudevillian," which adds one last layer of greasepaint to Momus's polymorphous career.
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, Stephin Merritt, Harry Smith, Kool Keith, More 
, Stephin Merritt, Harry Smith, Kool Keith, Wendy Carlos, Momus, Momus, Nick Currie, Nick Currie, Joe Howe, Joe Howe, Less 
