Mr. Me Too
Menomena on a Blog
Menomena's new album is not at all good— though nearly anyone with a heartbeat and a keyboard would have you believe otherwise— but it's not as bad as it is painfully mediocre. Though they've been around for a few years or so, they're pretty much a completely synthetic indie band: ironic promo shots, ironic song titles, music with weird time changes, the whole nine. I'm not sure why people haven't brought up that Friend and Foe was done fifteen times better about a year ago when Man Man released Six Demon Bag or when the Fiery Furnaces released every album they've ever made. If those two bands ever got together they'd have made Friend and Foe in their sleep on a bad day. I mean everytime I listen to this stuff it sounds more and more to me like a joke played on the internet, like, let's take elements from every popular indie band, put them together, and crash Stereogum's server— and it worked. It's almost like playing pick the sample with Night Ripper: tortured Honus Honus wails here, Love is All sax pumps there, airy Grizzly Bear melodies everywhere. Shame is, they can write reasonably well ("The Pelican"), but they're so tied up in art for art's sake that it becomes tiresome to pick out the good parts and lines and metaphors, etc. When these guys play the Bowery, will New York City explode?
There's a new Chromeo track at Discobelle, and it's predictably very good. They're all on Junior Senior's steez again— though I guess I'm not sure who came first— but there's this great moment everytime post-chorus where these drums that sound taken directly from "In the Air Tonight" scatter around the back of your head and it sounds like there's literally people in the back of your head beating drums around. For how overtly disco this is, it's pretty great headphones music.
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Labels: blogs, chromeo, menomena, phil collins
posted by Jordan @ 1:00 PM
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