Oedipus Schmoedipus

Like its predecessors, Oedipus Schmoedipus was conceived as the soundtrack to an imaginary film. NME's reviewer wrote that Adamson had undergone reconstructive hip surgery the year before, which postponed the project and left him in a wheelchair. Adamson himself described Moss Side Story, Soul Murder and Oedipus Schmoedipus as a triptych. On this one he started to sidle toward song structure and chose guests he looked up to in song, voice, character and humour: Billy MacKenzie of the Associates, Nick Cave and Jarvis Cocker. He called the album a last get-together with them to make some notes on where to go next.

He produced it himself. Cocker co-wrote and sang Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis, which opens the album and returns in short form as the closer. Cave co-wrote and sang The Sweetest Embrace, and MacKenzie sang Achieved in the Valley of Dolls. Atticus Ross programmed the first six tracks. Carla Bozulich and John Napier speak the voice overs on It's Business as Usual, and Miranda Gooch is the storyteller on Vermillion Kisses. Miles is credited to Miles Davis. Something Wicked This Way Comes was used in David Lynch's Lost Highway. The sleeve concept was by Adamson and Simon Henwood, and the cover photograph is a still from Philippe Garrel's Le Revelateur.

Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber gave it 8.1 and called it another extremely scary record, with It's Business as Usual, where the messages of a frantic ex-girlfriend loop over a humming groove, the most horrifying moment. NME gave it 7 out of 10 and found it too cool to be cringingly kitsch and too deep to be flaky. In frieze, Michael Bracewell wrote of the inner-sleeve artwork, which pairs the Virgin Mary with a nude pin-up and an old photograph of a maternal woman, and of the album's interest in the distance between love and lust. It reached 51 on the UK albums chart, spending two weeks there, and 77 on the Scottish chart. It is one of two Adamson albums on the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die list.