I didn't know about the balding, eye-patched Scottish musician Momus until I saw him at the Tokyo club Que tonight. But he's been around for a while and is apparently pretty popular internationally, as evidenced by the high number of foreigners in the audience.
Momus played alone with just a PC with sampled music on stage. It was a one-hour plus solo performance, which has the potential for pain for the audience, but Momus pulled it off well. With his great, raspy, tenor voice, he sang a stream of humorous and literary-sounding lines.
He lived in Japan for while and collaborated with Japanese songstress Kahimi Karie. Maybe as a result, some of his songs have references to Japan: "Tokyo is far away/The English wear a poker face", went one. Another song about a cat was inspired by a novel by Soseki Natsume, the great writer and face on 1,000 yen bills.
Momus also said Tokyo's his favorite city, which might be a line he uses in every city he goes to, but regardless, it was a statement with which I agreed wholeheartedly.
No comments:
Post a Comment