| Menomena: Something Like A Phenomena |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 12:17 PM | |
 Justin Harris at SxSW 2007 - Photo by Steve McPherson Friend and Foe is not a lush, fuzzy record, but it's also not exactly spare. Delicate, echoing piano figures huddle together, resonating in sympathy with the kind of simple yet brilliant vocal melodies that will wedge themselves into your subconscious. Fluid, spare slide guitar lines, tinkling vibraphone and hammered dulcimer—all these tiny pieces of the songs steel themselves against the propulsive rhythmic onslaught that churns in the bass, baritone sax, organ pedals, and especially Danny Seim's crashing, brash drumming. Friend and Foe's nearly breathless pace almost pushes aside the notes of melancholy and darkness that lie within the songs as a group, but that just makes its surfacing all the more effective. In "My My," a slowly rising crescendo of organ, thick bass, and menacing bari sax suddenly evaporates, leaving only singer/keyboardist/guitarist Brent Knopf's sweet tenor voice to wonder, "What if everyone is right? / I should have taken their advice," the rest of the band slamming back in when he sings, "But I can't change my mind." That tenderness may be what makes the record enduring, but it's its sheer sonic bluster that will initially grab you. In an article in the New Yorker, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones lamented the lack of rhythmic fire in today's indie rock bands, but Menomena's songs are almost always structured around rhythm, so it's not surprising to find that the trio's songs are usually written from the drums outwards. "We'll just all sit down for 20 or 30 minutes or so and start with a drumbeat," says singer/bassist/saxophonist Justin Harris by phone. "It's usually just off the cuff, improvised kind of stuff. And we'll get four or five or six different drumbeats that are all the same tempo and phrase-length and then we pass the mic onto someone else—bass or keyboards or something and so on and so forth until we have a group of little loops that all relatively work together and then we move on. We revisit that stuff later, and there's a lot of songs off the new album that were ideas from six years ago from our very first practices. But rarely do they stay in their original form." Much has been made of Deeler, the computer program written by singer/keyboardist/guitarist Brent Knopf that Menomena use to store musical ideas until they're ready to be fashioned into songs, but Harris, who's on the road with the band somewhere between Florida and D.C. when I reach him by phone, wants to clarify exactly what it does for them. "I should start by saying that the whole computer program thing has definitely been blown way out of proportion compared to what we actually use it for and what it actually does," says Harris by phone when I ask him about how lyric writing fits into their songwriting process. "It's nothing more than a real basic way of storing quick ideas, like a sketchbook. And then when we're actually writing and recording and arranging and everything, I would venture to say we don't do that any differently than any other band. Because at that point we're using ProTools, but we do have all these little loops and files that can inspire us in one way or another. Sometimes we'll use the actual original file, but the thing is, we don't take much time and care to make good sounding recordings when we're just recording these little ideas, so oftentimes they don't sound good enough to put on the finished recording, but sometimes they sound cool enough to use, and sometimes there's no way we'd ever be able to reproduce how they sound. It's kind of a mixed bag, but for me, once I have a structure in mind, then sometimes the melody comes first, or sometimes it comes last."  You might want to try Nair. - Photo by Alicia J. Rose "Actually, that's not true: trumpet was my first instrument in second grade," he clarifies. "I hated it because I just wanted to play the drums. And then a number of years later I started playing the drums in a church youth group and I was self-taught on most everything. I did take a couple bass lessons when I started playing bass, but then I realized that I learned more from a book I bought than from this guy who was teaching me bass. I didn't pick up a sax until about six years ago when we started this band."  Danny Seim at SxSW 2007 - Photo by Steve McPherson Filling up a live performance with only three members might be challenging, but filling up the physical space onstage is not a problem. "I'm the shortest in the band and I'm 6'1"," Harris replies when I ask them if they're basketball fans being a.) from Portland, where the Trailblazers are the only pro sports team around and b.) being pretty tall guys. "Brent is 6'4" and Danny's 6'9". Danny played basketball and he was really good, too." In recent months, Arcade Fire's love for basketball has generated some buzz on blogs, but Harris isn't completely convinced, and he senses an opportunity for a little payback, given certain design similarities shared by Menomena's first album, I Am the Fun Blame Monster, and Arcade Fire's deluxe edition of Neon Bible. "I'd put Danny up against Win any day, and if you're a betting man, I'd bet on Danny," he says. "Set it up: we'll take 'em, any time, any day. It'll be revenge for them ripping off our flip book idea," he laughs. menomena.com myspace.com/menomena COMING UP: Menomena with Illinois. Saturday, November 17. Varsity Theater. 8 p.m. 18+. $12. Download "Wet and Rusting" from Friend and Foe or stream below: Complete interview transcript on the Backstage. |
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| Last Updated: Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 12:47 PM |
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