By Daniel Stokes
Menomena
Mines
Barsuk
A lot of work—where work is read “head-scratching, analogy-straining, clever adjective-juxtaposing and neologism-coining on the part of the indie press”—has gone into describing both Menomena’s complicated, diverse, and mostly very pretty music, and their rather unconventional approach to songwriting. The Portland trio, made up of singer/multi-instrumentalists Danny Seim, Justin Harris, and Brent Knopf, has acquired some notoriety for assembling its compositions around improvised chunks sampled with software invented as a school project by Knopf. These loops form the skeletons for songs that the band fleshes out into pieces that can be performed live by the trio, adding layers of richness and complexity that three-pieces often struggle to achieve either on stage or in the studio. It certainly works. There’s no question that it sounds cool, or that they’ve got a lot going on. But there’s a lot of debate about what the heck to call it.
Perhaps the common denominator in all attempts to ascribe a genre to the band’s wild sounds is “pop,” often combined with “rock” or “post-rock,” a descriptor that the band itself seems to find amusing.
But pop is a really easy way out. There’s much more to Menomena’s fourth record, Mines, than the simple syllable “pop” would suggest. Menomena is fond of breakdowns and build-ups—many songs begin with a full minute or two of vocals over just a gently tinkling piano, droning bells, or on the crisp and brutal “Dirty Cartoons,” an acoustic guitar, before the full band lopes in. They also enjoy playful arrangements, featuring unorthodox instruments and their approximations, such as what sounds like a chorus of sweetly interwoven African thumb pianos during the opening minute of “Tithe”. Both the group’s composition and home-recording chops are shown off to great effect by tons of studio tweaking with pans, layered vocals, great swooping changes in dynamics, and surround-sound effects that sometimes recall a 21st century approach to the production techniques of the late 1960s. But it’s a lot more than just pop.
There are indeed sweet harmonies (the band is very well served by the fact that all its members seem to be able to sing), delicate piano lines, and sometimes-gentle hooks that would fit well on an indie-pop album anywhere from Chapel Hill to Glasgow. But there are also subtle undercurrents of reggae and dub, particularly on Tithe’s keening choruses, in which an echoing choir wails “nothing sounds appealing” over a booming bassline, or the funky nautical nightmare of “BOTE,” which recalls both a postmodern “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Exodus” in equal measure.
The album also offers shout-outs to garage rock, particularly on “TAOS,” my favorite tune on the record, which sounds like nothing so much as a deconstructed MC5, with fuzzed-out bass trading licks with howling guitar, bolstered by a sweetly honking saxophone in the song’s last third, all backing up the deliciously ironic Detroit-flavored belting of a vocalist proclaiming himself “not the most cocksure guy.” And multiple keyboards can be as creepy (as on the very pretty “Killemall,” which features a lovely phased chorus and angry organ line) as they are pretty (as on the softly-tinkling closer “INTIL,” or the stronger “Sleeping Beauty,” where nursery-rhyme phrasing and violent drumming that comes in midway through call to mind a more emotionally stable Neutral Milk Hotel).
These influences and more are melted together in an engaging record that manages to be dramatic without sounding pretentious. Mines may defy easy categorization, but if only for its complexity, it demands multiple listens. This record is all-but-sure to wind up on top-ten lists come December, so if you get it early, you won’t have to wait until the end of the year to figure out what to call it.
Released On July 27, 2010
Track Listing
1. Queen Black Acid
2. TAOS
3. Killemall
4. Dirty Cartoons
5. Tithe
6. BOTE
7. Lunchmeat
8. Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such a Big Bot
9. Five Little Rooms
10. Sleeping Beauty
11. “INTIL”
