Brooklyn rockers reach creative depths

By Joey Vergara

Published Sept. 28, 2007

Brooklyn-based Meneguar makes indie music the way it should be written: unrestrained and open for interpretation.

The band's sophomore album, Strangers in Our House, never stops pounding you over the head with gang vocals and '90s indie-guitar interplay, but this excitement is absolutely necessary in Meneguar's music.

It is pretty easy to play Meneguar off as the bastard son of, say, early Modest Mouse and late Fugazi, but that would be missing the point. Even if Meneguar's influences continually seep through its songs, this is a band that is doing something wholly original at the same time. With angular guitars and constantly urgent vocals like those found in the aforementioned bands, Meneguar's music still reaches uniquely creative depths.

Unfortunately, as a follow-up to 2005's I Was Born at Night, Strangers in Our House falls somewhat flat. "Bury a Flower"'s surf-rock playfulness comes close to recreating the exhilaration of I Was Born at Night's "The Temp" or "Hands Off," but it isn't quite the same or anything better, really.

On its own, though, Strangers in Our House acts as an excellent throwback to the raw indie rock of the '90s. Twitchy guitars and unfastened bass lines ground the record, and the songs' many discordant breakdowns split the mood when things get too tense. After a thoroughly charged build-up, "Death on Display" drops into one of these stripped breakdowns with gnawing vocals and clunky playing.

Vocalist and guitarist Jarvis Taveniere writes lyrics that are just vague enough to leave you guessing but harsh enough to know they are distinctly the product of a New Yorker: "It don't matter what you do/It matters how you did" or "And all my teachers were all failed authors." Placed on top of the band's poppy — in the loose sense of the word — music, these lyrics surely guarantee anthemic, fist-pumping sing-a-longs at upcoming Meneguar shows.

The secret weapon behind all of Meneguar's madness on Strangers in Our House is bassist Justin Wertz. "Hurry Up" stops and starts aggressively as the bass metallically throbs before the rest of the band joins in, switching to melodic interludes. Wertz provides a certain drone throughout the huge-sounding "Table 2" that contradicts and complements the guitars spikiness with equal precision. The slithering bass line on "Bury a Flower" takes the cake, though.

It can be hard to imagine that the same guys who comprise the extremely lo-fi folk-rock group Woods (Taveniere and drummer Justin Earl) fill the rest of their spare time with Meneguar, but stranger things have happened. The paranoid, slightly pessimistic lyrics combined with the album's title give Strangers in Our House a claustrophobic feel. The music seems to struggle against the troubles of living in Brooklyn, N.Y., while trying to make the most of the moment.

Like Taveniere screams in I Was Born at Night's "House of Cats," Meneguar has taken "a step back" and "two forward." Strangers finds the band recreating the best moments of I Was Born in some ways but not managing to get past it into any real new territories.