Word: menomena
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Getting to know Menomena can take time. The emerging Portland, Ore. trio’s name is playfully enigmatic, like an inside joke to which you’re not privy. A Muppets allusion, perhaps? The music doesn’t make the band’s intent much clearer. Their third release, “Friend and Foe,” opens with the richly layered “Muscle ’n Flo.” Its dynamic rhythm and slide guitar give way first to a shifting piano melody and then again to an organ surging...
Harris had a point. But then again, how often do you see the über-precise Carlos D discard his bass mid-song to play a rough saxophone riff or nimbly manipulate a set of keyboard loops with his feet? Menomena has always been a more claustrophobic, oddball project—and, as they showed last week, it’s had a most liberating effect on their music...
...allowed the band to compose complex pop suites by looping and sequencing live improvisations into tricky recursive structures. The components of its instrumental arrangements swooped in and fell out of trapdoors, constantly intertwining and unraveling like the title’s dorkily brilliant anagram (“The First Menomena Album?...
...course, such a technical approach can’t quite be replicated in a live setting, so Menomena were forced to scale back at T.T.’s, resulting in a surprisingly low ratio of gee-whiz effects and sequencing to good old-fashioned rockin?...
...Menomena occasionally sounded naked or incomplete outside the safety of the studio, but their best moments last Wednesday showed that sometimes you’ve got to disassemble indie rock to save...