page_title: The Poison Boyfriend
section_title: Music and lyrics
hierarchical_section_title: The Poison Boyfriend / Music and lyrics
caption_attribution_description: English: Momus, a.k.a. Nick Currie
context_page_description: The Poison Boyfriend is the second album by Scottish musician Momus, released in 1987 on Creation Records. After the critical success of Momus' Biblical-themed and stripped down debut album Circus Maximus, Momus left él Records and signed with Creation Records after he bonded with record label boss Alan McGee. His first release for the label, The Poison Boyfriend is a song cycle that features a full band; its first half features acoustic-based singer-songwriter songs with cabaret pop influences, while the more upbeat second half features synthesisers and drum machines.
  Lyrically, The Poison Boyfriend is broad in its subject matter, though largely psychosexual, with lyrics including themes of sexual depravity and voyeurism and writing styles such as character sketches. "Murderers, the Hope of Women" was released as a single ahead of the album's release. Upon its release, The Poison Boyfriend garnered favourable reviews from critics. NME named the album one of the best of 1987, while Fact Magazine later named the album the 81st best album of the 1980s. Momus would later develop upon the album's sexual themes on later recordings.
context_section_description: With Momus enlisting a backup band for The Poison Boyfriend, the album is a departure from his debut album, and has been described by writer Richard King as a "Gallic-flavoured song cycle." The first seven songs on the album add elements of cabaret pop, such as French accordion and waltzes, to Momus' singer-songwriter format influenced by Leonard Cohen, a style described by The Rough Guide to Rock as subdued and sometimes reminiscent of Nick Drake, whereas the last four songs are more upbeat and energetic, featuring synthesisers and drum machines. Several songs, such as "Sex for the Disabled", are said to border on synthpop.
  Lyrically, The Poison Boyfriend departs from the obscure religious themes of Circus Maximus, instead displaying a wider frame of lyrical reference, most notably incorporating a psychosexual theme that Momus would later develop on later releases. King felt the album "shone a light into a meditative and reflective voyeur's idea of romance." Subjects throughout the album include sexual depravity, prurient postcards, "nested despair" and acerbic tale-telling, with the lyrical style incorporating character sketches, complex symbolism, flowery language and elaborate metaphors. Momus felt his exploring of taboo subjects was largely due to "being ashamed of my proper, middle-class upbringing."
  "What Will Death Be Like?" makes use of repetition, with a simplistic pattern repeated throughout its seven-minute duration. Of the songs on side two, "Situation Comedy Blues" incorporates a mock-Motown Sound, while "Sex for the Disabled" is a quasi-soul "horny sex rap" in a Phil Spector-style Wall of Sound arrangement that Doug Brod of Trouser Press felt was a pastiche of Barry White, and which Huey compared to Prince's "Purple Rain". Lyrically, the "comically torchy" song is a surreal allegory concerning Thatcher's Britain, making note of Margaret Thatcher's contemporary "swerve in priorities." Described by Huey as "disarming" and the album's biggest stylistic change, "Closer to You" is a deliberate self-parody in which Momus "croons horny, confessional come-ons like a bookish Barry White." One writer felt the song was "a claustrophobic and uncomfortably personal exploration of obsession and longing."
caption: Momus, pictured in 2005.
exif: {}