Pitchfork

Picture the guy singing the jingles in the commercial on the TV behind the smart drink bar in the swiss ski lodge cantina in the level with the neon kickboxing peguins in the Japanese Playstation game about the ass-kicking iduro. That's Momus, aka Nick Currie. Named after the Greek god of heckling, Momus has been pumping out randy intellectual pop art for over a decade, gaining success in the land of the rising sun, Japan, and cult status in his native land of the absent sun, Britain. Ping Pong should finally carve a neat niche for him in the US. That is, if there is any justice in the world of music.

Momus is the epitome of the integration of the absurdities of modern technological society into pop music. No pop album has struck a intravenous needle so deep into the veins of the international zeitgeist since Blur's Parklife. Momus is the perfect rock star for the 21st century. One who jumps a jet to Sweden for a rave. One who has documentaries made about his life in Finland. One who signs autographs for screaming Thai teen fans. One who wears Harry Karay- sized glasses, a caeser cut, reactor+ sweaters, and a backpack with a cellphone.

But it's more than more than image and ideology that make Momus the model for future cult icons. His lyrics and hooks are nothing short of brilliant. Reading his liner notes is equally as enjoyable as listening to his sugary acoustic Casio pop. He writes of his theories of aesthetics, Tamogotchi toy symbolism, pop music conventions, German character, Tokyo, etc. For example, how many musicians can claim, "I met the writer Douglass Rushkoff at a digital conference in Amsterdam" and "the British artist Georgia Starr used my song "Rhetoric" in her Paris show this year as part of a project imagining a world in which the lyrics of love songs had become an authoritarian religion." Momus is the pop amalgamation of fashion, the internet, literature, film, travel, food, and sex. He's the music equivalent of postmodern writers Mark Leyner, David Foster Wallace, and William Gibson.

I'll admit, the music isn't much to write home about. It's casio pop. Pop stripped to its essentials to deliver the sexy satiric punch of the lyrics. The styles jump from twee- disco, to Japanese TV theme music, to Babybird ballads, to Beck-ish funk. The brightest moments come on the crotch driven "Professor Shaftenberg" and "Tamagotchi Press Officers." In the former he croons, "He is sponsored by Lufthansa to screw the pants off Japanese girls," in a sly, whispery voice. Yet it seems all incredibly intentional, as he acknowlegdes the ridiculous base pleasures of pure pop music. But more than the music, the rush strangely still comes from the perverted characters, ideas, writings, and image. Momus seems almost fictional, and is sure to quickly gain cult status among the Anglophilic, educated, and fashion sensible. I'm just surprised Bjork hasn't dated him yet.