Album Review: Menomena - Friend and Foe

Rating: 8 out of 10

Menomena are one of those bands I'm going to champion even when I don't necessarily like everything they've done. On a song-by-song basis, their ratio of "I Like" to "I'm Indifferent To" (there aren't enough "I Don't Like"s to mention) is honestly about 1:1. But man! those "I Likes" are some seriously and memorably strange gems. Much has been made of the way these guys approach songwriting - a custom piece of software spits out riffs, drum loops, etc. and then they mix and sequence these into real songs. Well, I had the pleasure of seeing them live (they inexplicably opened for Gang of Four two years ago), and can testify that they sound anything but canned.

Friend and Foe is stranger, more chaotic, and yet also more consistent than Menomena's debut I am the Fun Blame Monster! Whereas that album seriously lagged in momentum in the middle, Friend and Foe maintains its energy nearly throughout. ("Rotting Hell" is the one plodding sleeper.) On any given song the instrumentation is sparse, yet the overall palette is extremely diverse: multi-part vocals, drums, various percussion, lots of saxophone, pianos, and the occasional blasting guitar. The basic blueprint: select a couple of these elements, assign a melody or two (or three...) to those amenable to such, string them together or let them stage a succession of battles, include lots of empty space to make the explosive dynamics all the more intense, and use some of the most creative and fantastic drumming in the world to hold it all together.

I won't even try to do the songs justice with words - they're best experienced at volume and with an open mind. All three of my favorites are near the end of the album. "My My" is hauntingly beautiful, with an ascending break near the middle that still makes my skin tingle. It's followed by "Boyscout'N", a jaunty march complete with whistling and insistent sax bursts that just keeps getting larger in scope and sound. It burns itself out near the end and the whistling carries the listener over to the epic "Evil Bee," which manages to cram at least five different movements into fewer than that many minutes.

The sheer amount of creativity at work in this album is staggering. The songs are messy yet stately; unpredictable yet organically dynamic. And I'll repeat it: you won't hear drumming this inventive from anyone else. My one criticism about the album is it can be intimidating. There are definitely moods with which it works better than others, and I really wouldn't recommend it for social situations - it's a bit of a jovial bully for your attention. But it rewards that attention admirably and consistently. I expect a long shelf life on this one.