s with nearly all the music Scottish electronic musician Momus has been making since his start in the mid-80s, his latest album Oskar Tennis Champion is kitschy, slightly perverted, and joyfully eclectic. This is, essentially, another set of tongue-in-cheek electronic pop songs, inventively produced and always flavored with the unmistakable personality of their creator. In the often-un-personable realm of modern electronics, this personality -- as antisocial and amoral as it can often be -- is a welcome relief amid Momus’ glittering electro-cabaret tunes.


On Oskar Tennis Champion, gone is the controversy and non-musical hype related to many past Momus albums; there are no lawsuits surrounding this disc (yet), no accusations of pedophilia, no commercial gimmicks. However, the album was created through one of Momus’ clever conceptual projects. In this case, he sent his finished tracks to producer John Talaga of the Super Madrigal Brothers to be “re-produced,” and the results are what appear on this album. It’s impossible to hear what Talaga did to Momus’ tracks without hearing the original songs (which Momus promises to post on his website in MP3 format at some point), so in the meantime what’s left is just the same kind of pun-laden, well-structured pop that’s Momus’ stock-in-trade.


This record is packed with deceptively simple melodies -- often aping established pop forms and the singer’s usual array of influences -- that are nearly irresistible because of the detail that Momus and Talaga infuse into each of his songs. “Pierre Lunaire” is a clear highlight, a dark, demented meditation on obsession cased in sheeny synths and vibrating turntable scratches. Momus dispassionately intones about a male object-of-lust, culminating in the deadpan chorus “I’ll set myself on fire/ pour petrol in my hair/ as if he’d even notice/ as if he’d even care/ I’m so in love with Pierre Lunaire.” Around his voice, faux-strings and carnival keyboards chart Old World melodies while clattering percussion and a never-ending array of unidentifiable sounds swirl amid the controlled chaos. It all breaks down at the end for a low-budget hip-hop coda where Momus whisper-raps over junkyard beats.


This one song is illustrative of the entire album. It’s obvious that these little perverted rants like the delightfully titled “My Sperm is Not Your Enemy” have been compulsively thought out (and then re-thought by Talaga); there’s always a ton of sounds flying around in the background of each track, carefully arranged so that the whole is nearly seamless. The music also explores Momus’ broad influence base. On the title track, it improbably seems like the singer has been listening to Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, as muted horns rise out of a shimmering sea of electronic clanks and squeaks, with a beat only hesitantly coming to life beneath Momus’ vaudevillian singing. The Serge Gainsbourg influence is still present, of course, and many of the brooding electronic soundscapes on the album’s later half invite parallels to Wendy Carlos, as do the snatches of classical music incorporated into “A Little Schubert” (which is sung mostly in German).


Momus is up to his usual clever antics throughout the album, keeping things pretty light even when he’s at his most caustic and bitter. “Is It Because I’m a Pirate” pairs the ridiculous lyric with an appropriately woozy sea shanty. “Scottish Lips” is another rare treat, its lyric a curious mixture of sadness and humor, as the narrator muses on the superficial love that his paramour feels for him; when, at one point, he sadly says “I’m only joking,” it’s clear that he’s not. Ever the showman, Momus gets off on this stuff, which is what makes this all so fun. He’s reveling in wordplay and punning -- another parallel to Van Dyke Parks -- and equally excited by the dizzying sounds with which he surrounds his words. The e-mail correspondence between Momus and Talaga, posted on Momus’ website in his typical open style, reflects an almost childlike joy in the kaleidoscopic array of sounds that the two men bring to this recording, a joy that leaks through into the majority of these songs.


The album drags a bit towards its end with a string of samey downtempo ballads (though “Beowulf (I Am Deformed)” is saved by a killer melody), but prior to that it’s all just lightweight fun and head-spinning character sketches. Regardless of concept or flaws, this album is an enthralling experiment, its intoxicated shuffle swaying wildly from side to side without ever losing sight of the blurry, playful pop songs residing at its core.