Menomena — Friend and Foe
Published Feb. 20, 2007
Portland, Ore.'s, Menomena is nearly the quintessential Internet indie band. Its look, sound and story seems composite, if not mechanically engineered: gangly Northwestern white dudes with trying-too-hard press photos, pretentious album names (I Am the Fun Blame Monster) and a unique talking point — the lead singer creates a computer program to aid in the musical process. The band also plays skittish pop that "eschews traditional verse-chorus-verse structures." Applause, curtains, drive home safe, right?
Well, no. Menomena's Friend and Foe at the very least provides something to stick around and explore. It's an album that would've seemed like a logical stepping stone between the Fiery Furnaces' Gallowsbird's Bark and Blueberry Boat if that band had made it then. Barroom pianos, guitars and pounding drums power the album as other instruments sporadically appear, and pop and rock are mutated into a far artier mix of both.
And though at times it has moments that'll give you flashbacks to about 85 indie albums during the past two years (the opening piano smash and yelp on "The Pelican" is Man Man's Honus Honus sans testes), Menomena ends up concocting something on Friend and Foe that is, for better or worse, undeniably unique.
The better is that the best moments are an inspired mix of innovation and execution, but the worst are, of course, a very poor mix of innovation and execution.
And the funny thing is, with all the talk of "never heard this before," the most rewarding songs here are often the simplest.
"Rotten Hell," easily Friend and Foe's most linear song, builds itself on airy piano chords and lazy drum taps.
Nothing about the instrumentation or the song structure is particularly noteworthy, but the lyrics, melodies and sense of conveyed feelings are top-notch.
"The Pelican," which uses the bird in a metaphor about a hated lover ("I guess some birds never learn/ One day these tides will turn and leave you nothing"), is a foreboding, wailing, crunching rock song that thrashes around with none of the fluttering pianos or spurting saxophones in the album's other songs.
These two songs alone prove that beyond the entire hullabaloo regarding Menomena's overt uniqueness, it has a tight grasp on how to make "traditional" indie music both great and its own.
The ultimate problem with Friend and Foe is that the majority of the songs are too off-kilter for the sake of being off-kilter.
"Air Aid," a song that I refuse to believe anyone actually wants to listen to, is a stagnant, unmelodic, haphazard mess.
"West," which at nearly six minutes is nearly six minutes too long, is tribal, campfire "pop" in the worst sense.
Worse than those, is the song "Boyscout'n," in which the great pop moments are buried under the same dark, pointless moments that make up the worst moments of this album.
The only song in which Menomena successfully finds a happy medium between non-traditional structures and its best pop is on "Wet and Rusting."
The cascading piano line is evidence enough that this band can make show-stopping music.
Fans of bands like Love is All, Animal Collective, the Thermals and Grizzly Bear, in the expansive world of tried-and-true indie (Menomena's target audience) will find some moments and tracks here enrapturing.
If Menomena only further indulged itself less in art and more in pop, the whole album would be so.