MENOMENA//
FRIEND AND FOE//
BARSUK//
WORDS: ALEXANDER HENDERSON//

How often does a CD come around with elaborate, interactive album artwork, designed by one of the better talents in the comic book industry, that is just a legitimately really cool package? Okay, sure, there's Tool's 10,000 Days, but I argue that holding goggles up to your face is never cool. Either way, how often would you expect such an album to contain music inside that's more interesting than the packaging? Not as often as I'd like. And you could say the same about the trio behind Friend and Foe (Barsuk).

Menomena are a rare convergence of talent that excites me, as a music fan, on nearly every level: they engage my intellect, play with my sense of humor, give my contemplative side something to chew on, grapple with my Attention Deficit Disorder, indulge my melodrama and tickle my curiosity. They're a band I enjoy reading about almost as much as I enjoy listening to, but the music remains the best part of the whole package. The chase, which we're cutting to: Friend and Foe is excellent. Hopefully you've already heard their first two albums. If not, you're in the wrong class, because they're pre-requisites for this course. Still, for the latecomers - a review:

Their debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster (Film Guerrero), sounded like a goofy bunch of kids playing around with ideas too big for them. It might even have been an accident that it was so good, but Menomena didn't seem eager to test that. They opted to release the three-song instrumental album, Under an Hour (Film Guerrero), in lieu of a pop-structure follow-up, which rankled many. Under an Hour exhibited none of the queer catchiness of the debut, instead stretching out a handful of somber themes that, despite their experimental nature, ended up being exceptionally dense and thought-provoking.

What Friend and Foe does so well is inject the patience and maturity of Under an Hour into the hot veins of Fun Blame Monster. They temper each other here, and the resultant hybrid is the most accessible product yet of Menomena's weird genius. For example, on the debut, where you might have imagined a fully harmonized background chorus sounding perfect behind Brent Knopf's strained voice, "Rotten Hell" has what you need. And for those moments on Under an Hour when you wished there had been tighter emotional build up and release, look no further than the opener "Muscle'n Flo". For cleaner production and tighter, more dynamic songs, pick any track at random.

Not that the entire album falls obediently into line equidistant between their previous two efforts. There are moments where the dial swings more towards the extreme ends of the Menomen-O-Meter. "Boyskouts Sweetboyskouts" and "Weird" hearken back to Fun Blame Monster's exuberance, while "Airaid" and "Wet and Rusting" offer reflections of Under an Hour's beautiful layers of instrumentation. I wouldn't necessarily say Friend and Foe is better than what's come before, but it is obviously created with the listener in mind, which cannot be said for their first two releases.

As a band, then, where are Menomena now? Consider the differences between "Muscle'n Flo" and Fun Blame Monster's first song, "Cough Coughing." In both songs, attention-grabbing drum edits quickly give way to bass-lines drawn from the bottom of the ocean. But where "Cough Coughing" was frenetic, jittery and unpredictable, "Muscle'n Flo" is slow-burning. It expands and contracts between sedate and explosive, reverential and blasphemous. It would be silly to claim that the band has "grown up" in the four years since their debut, but the evidence of their mastery over the elements of tension and pacing is hard to ignore. With Under an Hour, they proved they could keep you interested - and excited - for 20 minutes at a time; on Friend and Foe, they demonstrate how to pack a four-minute song with an album's worth of good ideas.