Jul. 28, 2010 - Issue #771: Young at Heart
Mines
/ Supplied
Menomena {recordings_bands_mg} Mines {/recordings_bands_mg}
(Barsuk) , 2010
3
'This is a play," Danny Seim announces at the beginning of "Five Little Rooms," the first single off Menomena's third proper full-length. And as much as he's referring to the weirdly gothic little fable he's about to spin, it seems somewhat indicative of some of the moves Menomena is making on Mines. It's not that this is some extended concept album—although it does have some recurring themes about growing up without necessarily maturing and deterIoriating relationships—so much as that it's the album that feels most like something traditionally constructed. The group's past work showed the roots of their odd, invented-software style of cut-up composition, giving both I Am the Fun Blame Monster! and Friend and Foe a constrained cacophony feel, like the songs were always just on the verge of bursting out into freeform noise while retaining a complex pop sculpture.Here, though, Menomena is as close to a straight-ahead pop band as it's ever been, albeit one that's still heavily influenced by chaos. It doesn't always feel like the right move: before, the exposed structure of the band's songs beautifully mirrored the always-raw but equally tricky mood of the lyrics, whereas now the songs are just a bit more, well, standard, which is a bit disappointing from a band that was up there with Animal Collective and Liars as esoteric but still emotionally powerful.
There's just less of that on Mines, although the times Menomena does recapture it are almost roundly the album's best. "Dirty Cartoons" is a typically weary number, beat down with the early-30s sad-sack spirit of Matt Beringer, which slowly works in and then takes away a practical orchestra without ever losing its sense of mood. Follow-up "Tithe" begins simply as well, and while it never quite gets as screwy, its consistent build pushes its ennui into something that almost feels transcedent, like if existential crises got you into heaven.
But then we get a track like "BOTE": while it superficially sounds the most like some of the group's earlier work, it just feels dense where that stuff feels intricate, a lot going on without a precise ear shaping it (and it's hurt by a stretched-too-thin lyrical conceit). Opener "Queen Black Acid" is more streamlined, but in that case it probably goes too far: were it not for the haunting melancholy of traded-off vocals and a punchy drum bit, it wouldn't sound too far off compilation-rock indie, soundtrack fodder.
Still, though, the band does show some of the old brilliance. Closer "INNIT" relies mostly on a spare piano line and then some subdued atmospherics, but that only adds weight to the words, a depressingly mature treatise on necessary deceptions slowly killing a relationship. It's the first Menomena song that takes the overall melancholy into someplace haunting, and it proves that the group has some serious power even when not running at its best. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.