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PitchforkMedia reviewed... "Menomena don't even give you time to doubt them. Their signature modular pop is at its most effective on opener "Muscle'n Flo". Crashing drums lead you in, dropping out after just seconds in favor of a pulsating bassline and the prosodically delivered line, "In the morning I stumble towards the mirror." From this sparse beginning, the music blossoms with brimming intricacy, adding slashing guitar as the drums kick back in with a vengeance. The song is a total rollercoaster, eventually collapsing into a quiet interlude that sets up a brilliant moment where an organ figure that had been a barely noticeable background component suddenly rises to the fore and leads into a beautiful, floating passage of impassioned vocal harmonies. And that's just one of dozens of ingenious, spine-tingling details offered on the album. The band's technique of building songs from improvised loops arranged with custom software yields bigger, more developed compositions and stronger songwriting than on records past. "Wet and Rusting" is one of their most conventionally memorable songs to date, but also one of their most interestingly varied, as the textures that lie beneath the vocals constantly shift. It places the same rushing piano passage over two completely different rhythm tracks and makes it sound amazing both ways. "The Pelican" is a relentless stomp, nearly matched a few tracks later by "Weird", whose intense beat and ominous low-end groan slides through a tricky meter. With the exception of the majestic, fractured pop of "My My", the back half of the album is a great deal more abstract than the front, as it was on their debut. "Evil Bee" revolves around the refrain, "O, to be a machine/ O, to be wanted/ O, to be useful," and backs up the sentiment with strangely mechanical sounds that seem to have been created by processing recorded drum hits-- the bassline is crazy and intensely melodic, and they use the same vocal phrase about five different ways over all manner of instrumentation, including a heavy baritone sax riff and an fluidly ascendant, synth-saturated buildup. Once you've listened through a couple of times, it's stunning how many clever and exciting moments stick with you-- music this full of ideas, sections and material can come across as overstuffed, but this feels just right almost everywhere. Their previous two albums worked because of their stripped, immediate simplicity; Friend and Foe works just as well moving away from that approach and shows dimensions of the band-- especially in the vocal department-- that weren't apparent before. In fact, the biggest concern one might come away from Friend and Foe with is whether the band can top it next time." Use this link to listen to the whole album: http://barsukmusic.blaireau.net/menomena/ |
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