When I see two or more references in a short space of time to some established artist I’d barely heard of before - at least one from a friend - I like to take that as a prompt to listen to them. Thee Heacoat[ee]s: your Kafka review + Eddie Argos’ post on Ruth & Martin’s album club (interesting reading experience as a friend of a friend trashes the favourite album of a separate friend from the same part of the country). They look interesting due to the Billy Childish connection – but am no longer a fan of lo-fi feedbacky noise, which I imagine for some reason to be their stock in trade. On that basis, what if anything would you recommend to check out?
Have you listened to much Momus yet BTW, or only read his books? (This post was going to include a link to a song in which I always assumed he was surreally taking the piss out of Belle & Sebastian, but searching happened to show it was actually about an avant-garde Danish musician... Only he would wrongfoot one quite like that.)
Well, I still haven't heard his entire discography, but I think Hypnoprism, The Thunderclown & Bibliotek (2010-12) are a stunning run of albums. All concentrate more on great songs than anything else. (Joemus is kinda weird noises - I mean, breakcore + music hall - but it has some witty lyrics even if the Mighty Boosh arguably did some of the concepts first. I'd especially recommend its reworking of the Cooper o' Fife.) If you are more into the late 80s-early 90s indie synth sound than I am, you may like the early albums he himself put up for download here: http://www.ubu.com/sound/momus.html
which may solve the where-to-start-with-Momus dilemma