Momus: Folktronic

BY ELIOT ROSE

It's not as ambitious a project as it seems, since Momus's flippant attitude gives him about as much credibility as the ex-vice president. As he says in "Mountain Music," "I've got that mountain music in me/but not since I was born/I learned about it yesterday/from a CD-ROM." Nonetheless, at its best Folktronic offers up some incredibly witty commentary on our obsessions with technological novelty and hybridity. "Tape Recorder Man" tells the story of an Alan Lomax-esque hero who travels the country collecting folk songs and setting them to cheesy electronic beats until a disillusioned fan attacks him, breaks his tape recorder, and extols the resulting garbled noise as "folk music...concrete!" In "Folk Me Amadeus," Momus makes his point while conjuring up a dizzying whirl of obscure cultural references, weaving Alan Stivell, "Cotton Eye Joe," and Monsieur Oiseau into a single verse.

Unfortunately, a little bit of Momus's wit goes a long way, and for most of Folktronic he lets it run rampant, turning most of the songs into staging grounds for his clever couplets. Lyrically, the "folk" part of Folktronic manifests itself in purely cosmetic ways. Momus liberally peppers his lines with the word "folk" and hokey "ay ay yuppie" refrains but does little to emulate the simplicity of folk verse structures. In the rare instances when he does—as in the repeated one-line refrains of "Smooth Folk Singer" and "Appalachia"—it keeps the lyrics from overwhelming the music and produces some of the album's best songs. However, most of the time Momus is so impressed with his own wit that he relentlessly snarls out his vocals, drowning out everything else in the process. He also has a hard time restraining himself from including novelty tunes that are thematically unrelated to the rest of Folktronic, like the religious parody of "Protestant Art" and the scatological "Psychopathia Sexualis."

Given Momus's lyrical self-indulgence, it's no surprise that his music tends to fall by the wayside. Though he name-checks sequencers, samplers, 24-track recorders and other gadgetry, the "-tronic" element of Folktronic mainly consists of run-of-the-mill synths popping, clicking, and beeping their way through faux hoedown stomps and Celtic reels. It all seems forced, especially since the Casio bossa nova line that opens "Little Apples" is a more valid "folk" staple of electronic music than any of the frenetic digital jigs that compose the bulk of Folktronic.

But perhaps this gimmickry is all part of Momus' plan. His novelty lyrics and endless techno-cultural references give Folktronic the same disposability as websites like amihotornot.com and the same planned obsolescence as the computers that he mentions. Whether this makes him a brilliant pop culture conman or merely a second-rate They Might Be Giants with a G4 is a matter for debate, but one thing's for certain: you're not getting the joke if you spend $15 on some concrete piece of media like a compact disc. Instead, take the folktronic route and point your browser to www.demon.co.uk/momus, where you can view the lyrics, and then go poke around for MP3s if you're still curious. It's easy, free, and anti-establishment. Bob Dylan would be proud. (Le Grand Magistery)

Back to A&E...