Menomena- Friend and Foe

    Any of you who watch bad 70’s karate movies will be familiar with the words “drunken master”. For those who aren’t, it’s a fighting style which seeks to imitate the stumbling unpredictability of being completely shithoused, but maintaining impeccable balance so as to overcome one’s opponents while confusing them. If the aforementioned is the result of kung-fu monks and alcohol, then Menomena is what happens when black-belt music students find LSD. The only apt comparison to their heavily orchestrated and reeling style is The Flaming Lips, but Coyne & Co. are just their logical jumping off point. On Friend and Foe, this Portland trio takes quirky layering, slaps on some inside-out guitars, and fills in the cracks with saxophones, trombones, glockenspiels, jingling keys, and whatever else they can claim to play. Gadzooks! Unlike the similarly off-the-walls Man Man, whose knack for secondary instrumentation is dotted with nonsense call-and-response shouts, Menomena’s recordings remain downtempo, professional, and somehow natural.

    The cool thing about Menomena remains that they don’t have a “frontman” per se. Every one of the three members takes singing duties in turn (and sometimes concurrently, for harmonizing purposes), and each are capable of playing at least 10,000 instruments each. So that might seem like an overstatement, but who are you going to believe, your common sense or the internet? Moving onward- percussionist Danny Seim (who I would like to believe is somehow related to Hella’s Spencer Seim), lends some genius beats and keeps up with dozens of come-and-go orchestrations without overplaying. This is especially true of the gorgeous “Wet and Rusting”, a rainy day soundtrack candidate which lays acoustic guitars, synths, and mirages of piano over a sad-eyed spider’s web bass.

    As you may have guessed, this is a musician’s album. Everything in their composition is both tremendous and unique, but the lyrics aren’t quite at the same level. Their words compliment the music well, and all three singers have equally enthralling voices, but “Oh in the morning/I stumble/my way towards/the mirror and my makeup/it's light out/and I now/face just what I'm made of” is about the best this record has to offer, making lyrics a negligible stumbling block. This is more than made up for by the consistency of Friend and Foe, which remains impressive throughout (as opposed to the last few reviews, which have been top-heavy let-downs). I’ve been waiting to say it: Friend and Foe is phenomenomenal.




Friend and Foe

mewithoutYou- [A--> B] Life

    Doesn’t it suck being told what to think? What an ego that must take. One issue of particular sensitivity for such speech is religion [whodda thunk?!]: whether it’s the Devil Wears Prada telling me I ought to believe in god, or Cursive telling me I’m doing it right, the result is the same- preachy people sound like twits. I realize the irony of preaching about preaching; this blog is actually a ruse to find recruits for my new MetaChurch. Regardless, between both ends of the twit spectrum, there are a select few who can talk about the great beyond without judgment, and among the finest of this lot is the Philly-based post-hardcore group mewithoutYou.

    “Experimental” doesn’t really do these guys justice. More accurately, they’re about twenty different genres baked together (somehow) logically, with a ripped-from-the-heart confessional spoken word poetry glaze. Despite sounding a lot tastier, that’s not quite as easy to say. Opener “Bullet to Binary” has the sci-fi bleeps and a menacing guitar which act as a perfect set up to Aaron Weiss’ vocals, which have been reported to set microphones aflame from a distance of up to sixty feet. Each track flows into the next on A to B Life, and the followup “The Ghost” is the kick to the gut while you’re still down. Weiss channels a throatier Guy Picciotto with “You were a song that I couldn't sing/you were a story I couldn't tell/I've only ever loved myself/But I've loved myself so well” on “Nice and Blue”, where the world’s slowest pickslide sounds like splitting the spine of a brand new hardcover.

    While A to B is mostly aggressive, mewithoutYou have the good sense to quiet down here and there to make the hard parts sharper. “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” could pass for downbeat Pinback, until it expands into a massive alt-country crescendo. “Gentlemen” strikes back viciously after the instrumental “A” with the words “And through a garden overgrown/Oh, it's a long walk home/I said I'd not come back /Well I'm coming back-” and the pause before “And you'd better be alone” is guaranteed to send you shivering, next day delivery. This record pushes the bounds of post-hardcore by incorporating a lot of unlikely candidates (like the Slash-style solo on “Be Still Child” and the RX Bandits synths of “We Know Who Our Enemies Are”) which makes it a sometimes tough but remarkable listen.




[A--> B] Life

Capsule- Blue

    Want to know what kind of music a sexually abused child who grew up listening to sped-up Castavet sounds like? Okay, so that might not be the best way to make this record sound appealing, but then again, the tortured breakneck introversions of Capsule aren’t for everyone. It’s a record both difficult to categorize, and at times, difficult to listen to. This is music from another, angrier planet, where song structure is not fully understood, and chords of an even remotely major variety are punishable by death.

    Most tracks go by in a furious blur of raucous guitars, and drums beaten within an inch of their lives, stopping and starting on a whim. There are hints of Sleepytime Trio screamo, metalcore, and experimental a la Blood Brothers at their loudest, with Fall of Troy stabbings. The lyrics are similarly incomprehensible, as mid-album monster “Determinal” amounts to the single line “Some chains intaken...Trust in weight to drag to heave no sky no witness”. Likewise, “Cobalt Connection” is comprised of the words “All hail next expurgator to frame his place over the fire so we shed/Transhumance /You left us slaves so we shed.” Transhumance?! Are you fucking kidding me? For those unaware, ‘transhumance’ is, according to Wikipedia, the seasonal movement of people with their livestock over relatively short distances, typically to higher pastures in summer and to lower valleys in winter. What this song has to do with animal herding is beyond anyone’s best guess. With or without looking up the words, you’ll be left scratching your head, as buried, screams-of-the-eternally-damned vocals are the status quo on Blue.

    The ten track assault of Blue is only broken by the slow, booby-trapped soundscape of “Title Track”, which lumbers along like an axe murderer in the obligatorily abandoned warehouse/metalshop, making way for their album closer “Going Home”, a twelve-minute behemoth which has every intention of grinding your bones to make its bread.

    Even after close analysis, I still cannot distinguish what is it about Blue that makes it so compelling. It seems that Capsule are trying their darndest to make this an unappealing, brutish mess, and yet it becomes somehow personal. It’s your mess. Like that closet you don’t want to clean, but can still find everything in. As mentioned, this is absolutely not a record that everyone will like, but it stands as an interesting experiment in left-of-center music that’s worth a heady listen.



Blue