Barry Adamson

Oedipus Schmoedipus
Mute, 1996

An album named after Freud's Oedipal complex could only begin with a song about sex. On Barry Adamson's Oedipus Schmoedipus it's 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis', a play on the title of a famous Pink Floyd track, with Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker doing tongue-in-cheek guest vocals over Adamson's giant gospel-disco beat. The gangly Britpop singer groans and pants and pretends to be a devastating sex symbol while masturbating alone in a mess of "damp towels and asthma inhalers". "Can't you see what's on offer baby?" he bluffs. "Yeah baby, it's going cheap today/ And all the girls say, come on Jarv, can I be the first?/ You make us so hot we feel we're gonna burst!"

Adamson left his job as a graphic designer to join a punk rock band in the late 1970s. He was successful, sort of, and caught Howard Devoto on his way out of the Buzzcocks to form post-punk group Magazine. Adamson later played and collaborated with awfully-serious figures like Nick Cave, director David Lynch and experimental duo Pan Sonic. His solo records were never so po-faced as his colleagues', but never quite full of cheer either. They were a synthesis of his favourite sounds – punk, jazz, lounge crooners and especially film-noir soundtracks – with a strange mix of lascivious humour and sadism.

Adamson's first album, Moss Side Story, was a creepy, experimental jazz soundtrack to a fictitious film noir. Oedipus Schmoedipus kept on with the idea – the sultry 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' was later used in Lynch's film Lost Highway – but with more variation in sound and subject. Along with Cocker's cameo is one from Nick Cave, who appears on syrupy-sweet love song 'The Sweetest Embrace' with spiteful lyrics. "My desire for you is endless and I'll love you 'til we fall," Cave purrs to his lover, and then bluntly adds: "I just don't want you no more." It gets darkest on 'Business As Usual', where a series of deranged phone threats from an obsessed lover are set to drums and a few brittle, wiry strings. That Adamson can follow up something so evil with a sprightly little jazz number is impressive. Something tells me he's had a very interesting love life.