 Klaus Nomi Like most truly unique singers (Lou Christie, Blossom Dearie, Yoko Ono, and so forth), Klaus Nomi will sharply divide people on the point of whether he's great or ridiculous. We at Polyholiday tend to side with the unique singers, and Klaus Nomi is nothing if not unique. Klaus Nomi is a masterpiece of insanity and camp, fusing new wavey pop with freakish castrato-like opera vocals and a literally "from outer space" attitude. Aside from other Klaus Nomi albums, perhaps, there is literally nothing on this planet that sounds like Klaus Nomi, his debut. For those unfamiliar with Nomi, he falls stylistically somewhere between Joel Grey and The Cars, and vocally somewhere between David Bowie and Kiri Te Kanawa. Truly shocking to behold for the uninitiated, but eternally rewarding for those with whom this clicks. It's an utterly weird album, and yet extremely catchy and well-produced. What seems like a novelty at first begins to reveal a lot of depth and knowingness after a couple of listens. And if you can own this CD without compulsively playing it over and over, you must have no ears. It calls out in a high-pitched falsetto, "Play me – – play me – – know me!!!!!!!!!!!!" Track one, "Keys of Life" opens the album with a lot of moody mysteriousness and doesn't allow you to decide where the album is coming from. Is it Euro? Is it Goth? Is it pop? Is it New Wave? Is it a joke? Is it great? It may be all those things, but it is foremost Nomi announcing his arrival "from ancient worlds" to let mankind know that "the future has begun." His aims: "Exploring new dimensions/New lifestyle my intention." He certainly achieves that with the next two tracks, covers of the 60s pop hits "Lightning Strikes" by Lou Christie and "The Twist" by Chubby Checker. The former is one of the most radically reimagined covers I've ever heard, simultaneously laughable and wonderful, but ultimately magnificent. After a few listens, you start wondering why other pop performers don't fuse "oldies" with opera. Utterly stupefying, incredibly fresh music. "The Twist" is even more bizarre (it opens with the rewritten line "Come on humans/Let's do The Twist") but nearly as perfect, replete with multitracked Nomi's cackling and belting out high notes in falsetto. Once you're inside this album's aural landscape, there's no way out, and although it's very, very frightening, it's enormously comforting and inspiring as well. The highlight of Klaus Nomi for me is the silly yet victorious "Nomi Song": "If they saw my face, would I still take a bow?All this set to the sort of music that Blondie was doing around the same time (1979-80). It's almost great Broadway, and almost great pop rock, but it's definitely great Nomi. This segues into "You Don't Own Me" ("You Don't Nomi" features in the lyrics, of course) which revisits the merry insanity of "Lightning Strikes" to great effect. Wonderful music, even a twin-guitar solo for the straight people. The second half of the disc (or "Side 2" to all ya'll over 25) is a great deal more ponderous, opening with "The Cold Song" by Henry Purcell, which is either the most depressing thing I've ever heard in my life or the most inappropriately theatrical pop song ever attempted. Either way it's great listening. Nomi shows off his considerable vocal chops and pulls it off with real class. A great performance. The next track, "Wasting My Time," is an edgy late 70s/early 80s jagged guitar tune a la Double Fantasy-era Yoko Ono, and features the line: "When I'm with you, I feel so unreal/Well, we've all been there. Track 8, "Total Eclipse," is perhaps the weakest song on the album, although that's relative, as it's still a great performance, suffering only from a bit of overdone production (though I'm not sure that complaint can be justifiably raised against anything on this album ... I mean, how could you possible overproduce Klaus Nomi, himself a walking overproduction?) … some great lyrics on this one too. "Nomi Chant" is a short, very atmospheric piece in the vein of "Keys of Life," but a great deal more serious-sounding and haunting. The album ends with a live performance recording of Klaus doing an aria from "Samson and Delilah" by Saint-Saens. Like "The Cold Song" this really shows of Klaus's voice and captures the otherworldly (make that othergalactic) quality that was his trademark. And then, with some electronic pyrotecnics signaling Nomi's return to his planet, the album is over, just thirty-two minutes of some of the most daring, risky pop ever attempted. More than simply being a great album, Klaus Nomi is a document of the enigmatic Nomi himself, and is an all-too accurate metaphor for his short, but very distinctive, life. Apparently Lou Christie himself says that he and Nomi were planning to work on a project called "Space Opera" before Nomi's early death from AIDS silenced such plans. If the world was denied that masterpiece, at least there is this one to pay tribute to the genius of Klaus Nomi until the world finally catches up.
Review by Todd Plasma |