As some of you know I'm from (near) Portland and in my younger days I'd see many a show downtown and had about a B- in Hipster Studies based on the amount of time I spent in record stores and how many one inch buttons I had on my messenger bag. I wasn't totally suburban but yet I also didn't weigh 81lbs and have a fashionable alternative hairstyle and fashionable punk-inspired thrift-store clothes or smoke clove cigarettes with my Pabst Blue Ribbon. I was happy in this medium, it meant I could travel into town on a show night, stand in line and blend in pretty well with the seasoned hipster elite without them glaring at me and whispering about my disguise. And it was a disguise; I shop at Old Navy and Target, I get my hair cut regularly and I hate PBR, I was sure they'd sniff me out for sure. Not to mention that I was about 20lbs overweight to be a real twentysomething Portlander, for some reason the walking and the cigarettes make everyone downtown really skinny, which helps them fit into their tiny ironic/vintage/esoteric rock t-shirts and tight wool cardigans.But this review is not about how all hipsters/punks/emo-kids look pretty much the same even though they're "expressing themselves" by wearing black drainpipes with hundreds of tiny chrome studs and letting their hair grow wild. Not entirely. This post is about how much I love Portland's native music. We have bands like Viva Voce, The Helio Sequence, The Decemberists, The Shins, Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, Sweaty Nipples, The Thermals, The Dandy Warhols, Climber and Menomena. We rock. So being a vicarious Portlander I felt a certain association and pride when it came to Menomena. Their first album "I Am the Fun Blame Monster" was amazing on a lot of levels and they were killer live so I shared it with everyone I knew. I even went out and bought their experimental second release "Under an Hour" which consists of three instrumental tracks that are no less than 17 minutes a piece. They're a hard working band with talent and a great sense of humor. I mean "their original website":http://www.menomena.com/menu2.html is like something out of "HTML 101 for Beginners and the Colorblind". But I'm getting carried away again. Let's hear about the record, shall we?
The record opens with what appears to be the sound of someone kicking a drumset down a short flight of stairs. What follows is not as easily recognizable. Melody, bass, drums, at least three guitar tracks and a a shimmering organ bounce around and interweave, stopping, starting, bubbling up and crashing down. If you'd say it sounds like a band getting the shit kicked out of it by a herd of cows you'd only be half right. It's more than that, it's beautiful and uplifting, it makes you want to sing to your steering wheel. It makes you want to join The Polyphonic Spree. It makes you want to stand up if you're sitting and sit down if you're standing. And I'm not just talking about the first track either. Through the whole record it feels as though the music is barely held together by a weak but playful gravity. At times it sounds like the whole mess will come apart and become noise, at others it draws into itself to become something calm and quiet and steady only to erupt again into the swirling mass of 4 guys sounding like 13. The sound gives you the feeling that you should be ready to duck at any moment. Yes it's that good. No it doesn't sound like anything else out there except maybe Animal Collective. Seriously though, I can elaborate all I want with flowery metaphors and smilies... simili.... simuli...you know, where you say one thing is like another thing? Anyway, I can go on and on but in the interest of time I'm just gonna use the fancy MP3 uploader to give you a nugget of this album for those who haven't heard it.Puffmagic gives Menomena's "Friend and Foe" 4.5 out of 5 Rob Gordons
Here's the aforementioned opening track "Muscle 'n Flo".
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