The dense, aggressively stylized music of Portland, Oregon's Menomena hits me in a weird way. I love the inventiveness, the audacity, and the ceaseless creativity; yet I sometimes find Menomena's bric-a-brac process nauseating. It can be hard to gain orientation in its manic, shoehorning of styles. Their music is part hard-rock, part jazz, part funk -- actually, it's part everything -- and it requires a very specific mood.
Live, however, Menomena transforms into a group of full-fledged rock stars, and its knotty and disjointed sonic palette becomes more breathable.
It's still dense as hell and somewhat impersonal, but the tunes feel less abstract. With all the mentions that their custom digital looping program, DEELER, gets, or the attention of their super-democratic process of songwriting, it's easy to forget that Menomena can bring it, so to speak. And brought it they did on Tuesday night at the Bottleneck.
This could be because their new bag of music -- the overwhelming, but ultimately satisfying Mines (from which they played most of) -- comes with at least two heavy-hitters, "TAOS" and "BOTE." "TAOS" is one of the best songs released this year, and opens with a chugging baseline before skittering off into jagged, tumble-down drumming. The whole thing builds magnificently, with a mini messy high-hatted drum solo, lilting piano work, and maniacal sax.
The baritone sax -- perhaps Menomena's signature instrument -- almost didn't make an appearance during the night's set, after it was broken in an "emo freakout" during a concert in Atlanta. (Pleading to Lawrencians over Twitter, the band promised V.I.P. passes, karma, and high-fives to anyone that would let them borrow a sax.)
Where "TAOS" was rollicking, shit-kicking rock and roll, "BOTE," with its plucky keys, creepy textures, slow rhythm passages, and guitar freakouts, was more epic prog-rock. Other songs like "Sleeping Beauty" and "Killemall" accumulated tangental dread with hard-hitting keys, slower tempos, and highlighted textures.
Between these songs (and the older ones), Memonema led a fiery march through sonic madness. The only flaw in the show was the Bottleneck's poor sound setup, which caused band members to constantly plead for more this-or-that in their monitors. But this was handled with good humor by the band, even if it was sadly distracting.
Though its music is sometimes serious and high-minded, the members of Menomena were not above goofing around and having fun. At one point, someone in the audience asked, "Who is the guy on the keyboard?" to which lead singer Justin Harris replied, "Yanni." Brent Harris, the guy on the keyboards, then played and extended Yanni-esque riff. The band also baited the audience with a fake-out cover of "Semi-Charmed Life."
Like I suggested before, Menomena's music isn't always easy to digest, but they hold to their prodigious originality. It's not often that you can say that a band completely owns their sound, but Menomena -- for better or for worse -- truly sounds like no one else.
Setlist:
Tithe
TAOS
Weird
Killemall
Muscle 'N' Flo
5LR (Five Little Rooms)
BOTE
Wet 'N' Rusting
D.C.
Pelican
Sleeping Beauty
Evil Bee
Encore:
SMTW
Comments (0)