Mar. 03, 2010 - Issue #750: Megadeth

Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi {recordings_bands_mg} Klaus Nomi {/recordings_bands_mg}
, Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi
(RCA)
Originally released: 1981 

Perhaps all you need to know about Klaus Nomi is that, even in late-'70s New York, the birthplace of American punk and New Wave, the centre of a burgeoning gay art and social scene, a proving ground for post-Warhol avant garde art and kind of a scummy shithole to boot, he was considered particularly odd. In the excellent documentary The Nomi Song by Andrew Horn, there's one particularly revealing anecdote where a young girl seems particularly smitten with him because she thinks he's a Martian.

Certainly part of the appeal of Nomi is that there just aren't all that many people like him, even today. The appreciation of esotericism has grown considerably, especially in pop music—there was the anti-rockstardom of grunge and now the indie appreciation of bookish nerds and outright outcasts (Joanna Newsom's new album is finally out, by the by)—though in Nomi's time that was still in its somewhat nascent stages. David Bowie, who called on Nomi for one of his SNL performances, opened the door for a little more weirdness, and it's hard to picture Nomi breaking out of his performance-art roots and onto a major label without both the template and the endorsement.

But anyway, the man: a statuesque, gay, German countertenor, Nomi generally sported a white pallor with black, bee-stung lips and an oversized plastic tuxedo, with hair that looked like he first stuck his finger in a socket, then styled it around the results. He freely indulged both his operatic roots and American pop, occasionally mixing them in a way that was both reverent and deconstructionist. But what really makes it all odd is his sincerity: there is very little sense of irony or distance in Nomi's work—although a very strong one of theatre and showmanship—which gives it that extra je ne sais quoi that all the truly weird ones possess.

That's distilled best into his pop covers. His self-titled debut contains three: "Lightning Strikes," "The Twist" and "You Don't Own Me." The first is kind of a synth-lounge take punctured by Nomi's absolutely incredible voice, his soaring falsetto calling to the heavens for the chorus; the second is a slowed-down and ghostly version of the Chubby Checker classic that manages to both reveal how ridiculous it is and lay plain just how oddly sexy the song was; the last is maybe the best, a slight tweak that both celebrates his sheer uniqueness and plays like a slightly sinister gay anthem. They make a pretty direct statement about how Nomi fits in with his adopted culture, but they don't lose any of their effect for it.

Independent of his persona, though, his absolute best work is "Total Eclipse," written by Kristian Hoffman and the undeniable centerpiece here. It's just a damn fine New Wave ditty about impending nuclear holocaust—although it could be pretty easily be transferred to an environmental context, for today's audience—that trades mostly off Nomi's vocal acrobatics and bass line worthy of the funkiest '70s soul. Though just for good measure, there's some Fear of Music polyrhythms in there and some clever lines about the impending consumerism of the Me Decade, too. It's pretty much the best song from the '80s that you've never heard. V

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