I've been on the fence about this Menomena album for a while now. I am a huge fan of the Friend and Foe era of their work (their, you know, last era). That album is pretty much close to perfect, full of interesting songs that fill me with all sorts of cool emotions and basically forces me to sing along with them. Even the b-sides from that era (one of which I've posted here) are awesome, featuring the same general "Menomena sound".

That's what was initially upsetting about Mines, that they basically threw away their established sound. Mines sounds more like a traditional rock record---the songs here don't exactly follow verse-chorus-verse but they're more conventional all around. The instruments are given plenty of room to breathe---silence and echoes seem to be the major theme musically. Each instrument has it's own space in the mix, clear and concise, just like it used to be, but everything else just feels different.

Rocker "Taos" is the obvious entry point. Upbeat, heavy even, with a vocal and lyrics that just sound like someone is about to get totally all up in your grill. It's a great song, I almost posted it here instead of "Dirty Cartoons", and it's where you can search for a lot of Menomena-isms if you need to: little blasts of brass accenting the break (call and response with the guitar, I'm in love), the near-yelping vocal, and lyrics that sound like they're describing a way you've always felt but have never been able to articulate.

But it's "Dirty Cartoons" raw emotional wailing of "Go home... I'm trying" that really got me. This is one of those hooks that I wish I had thought of. It's so simple, a bass, a shuffling drum beat, and four words and you have full minutes of a song that is emotionally full and powerful. I like this song a lot, but I do wonder what the heck he means by, "I was misled by dirty cartoons." Misled to believe what? The only dirty cartoon I've ever seen was that one with the cat, and I don't know what you could get from that.

I guess now that I think about it, the main difference on Mines from their prior work is that it just sounds more like they have a normal drummer, and aren't just three hyperactive super inventive guys laying out crisp, interesting and dynamic drum beats. It almost sounds like they made a conscious decision to pare back the drums on this record and give the songs room to stretch their legs. As such, Mines is a more contemplative record, which goes in line with the theme of 2010 releases, it seems.

All in all, while I started off initially pretty disappointed in the quiet and almost depressing tone of this album, I've come to recognize elements of the band that I fell in love with in it. I also realize that changing their sound between records is something good bands do, and that I normally appreciate it more than this. It's only bad bands that release similar sounding albums. I guess I just didn't expect Menomena to change their tone so drastically, but I suppose it makes sense. It almost matches the mood of Danny Seim and Brent Knopf's solo projects. So, as always, YMMV.

It's four years ago and I'm sitting in my room trying to keep myself calm. I'm telling myself that I'm just being insecure, that my my two prior relationships with women I couldn't trust even before I got into relationships with them set me up for this kind of insecurity, that I'm doing this to myself because I can't trust myself because in this situation I'm the one who cheated on her the first time around, so of course I assume she's evil because everyone says she's so much like me, and why would she be hanging out with some guy from the internet if it wasn't to try to find someone better than me? And what if he is better than me? What will stop her from fucking him right then and there without giving me any notice? Of course he's better than me, who isn't better than me, and if I were her, I'd do it, I'd fuck him if he was even only a little better than me because after eight months of this even a little better is better enough. I'm driving myself crazy. It's four years ago and I'm text messaging to see if they're on their way to the movie they're supposed to go see.

They're not, she says, since her mother and grandmother aren't home they've decided to just stay alone in her house and watch a movie and I said, hey, I'm not really OK with that, and she says she doesn't care if I am not OK with that and that I should relax and be cool because I already said I was cool with it, but when I said that I was lying because I wanted so desperately to be cool with it, not so that she would feel good or think I am cool but because I just wished I was cool with it because it's not fun for me to be panicking that my girlfriend is going to fuck some other guy from the internet and perhaps if I lie to her I'll believe the lie myself and just enjoy a night by myself and besides these days I mostly kind of hate her but without her I'll just be alone and it's four years ago and I don't yet have the confidence necessary to realize that finding another woman isn't hard at all. It's four years ago and temporarily all my hatred for her drains away into an explicable need and even though I calm down for the couple of seconds it takes me say whatever do what you want I'm cool as soon as I hang up I am heading outside and getting into my car and driving over to house and for what purpose I don't know but maybe it'll show her that I love her so much she doesn't need to hang out with some other guy and she'll kick him out and instead we'll sit on her couch and watch a movie and be a happy couple again. It's four years ago and I'm still lying to myself not even in an attempt to make myself look better in her eyes and it still isn't working.

I see his car outside her house and I briefly contemplate keying it or maybe taking a shit on it or something else that doesn't really make sense and I later learn the guy was smart and that wasn't his car at all and his actual car was parked several houses down the street but I do nothing anyway because that is what I do. It's four years ago and this guy is younger than I am now and the perspective I have now makes me not feel like blaming him necessarily because tail is tail and he didn't really know what he was doing and even if he did I can't blame him because I probably would do the same thing now if I had never changed from being the asshole I was four years ago, the asshole he is now four years ago sitting inside my girlfriend's house on the couch watching television and I can see him through the blinds and they're sitting on opposite sides of the couch and I feel relieved but I walk back to my car and I call her anyway. She calls me crazy and I say that it's not crazy to be upset when your girlfriend is locked in her house alone with some guy and won't come outside to talk to her upset boyfriend who she is supposed to love. She says she wont come outside and that I need to go away and what do I hope to accomplish and I say I just want to know that she loves me and it's obvious she doesn't but she tells me she does, she tells me she loves me and she won't do anything to hurt me and she's just going to watch a movie and leave and she hangs up.

It's four years ago and this still isn't enough for me so I drive down the street a bit and park where I can still see her house and I wait and talk to a girl living in Tennessee through my phone and she tells me over and over again that if she were me she'd just walk away and not even bother, that it's obvious what is happening and I say I don't want to believe it, that I want to be wrong, that I want to be crazy and paranoid and I want to see him leave, but two hours later when the movie is surely over and my phone is dead and I am simply feeling like a creepy guy sitting on a street late at night he still hasn't left and at this point I've already pissed into a plastic water bottle and now I'm starting to feel like I am going to shit myself so my head clears for a moment and I think: I'm being silly. I'll just walk up to the house and knock on the door and say, I'm sorry for being silly, but can I use the bathroom and then I'll go home, oh and by the way why hasn't he left yet, what is going on in there?

It's four years ago and when I get to the door before I knock I think I better look in through the blinds again and I see that the living room is completely empty and my heart drops into my stomach and my body starts to shake so I walk around behind the house and the dog that always barks at me and everyone else doesn't bark but sniffs me in an unusually friendly way as I open the gate and walk around the back of the house, over to the side yard, and up to her bedroom window. It's four years ago and when I peer through her blinds I see her lying in bed with him.

It's four years ago and he's shirtless and she's not wearing any pants or underwear and he's kissing my girlfriend and he's got his hand buried between her legs and it's four years ago and I knock on the window and it's four years ago and I'm completely alone in this and it's four years ago and sometimes when a sad song comes on I relive all these feelings all at once and it's four years from now and I still won't forget what it feels like to be so betrayed but it's right now and I don't blame anyone or dwell on it because in the end everyone gets what they deserve even if there isn't any God or Karma to make sure it happens, it just happens, because bad people invite bad things into their lives and what is what it really is so if you're tired of bad things happening to you the only solution is to stop doing bad things to other people and if you're too stupid to figure this out then you're only getting what you've been asking for all along. It's right now and bad things do not happen to me anymore.

I've never listened to this album through headphones, and that was such a terrible mistake. It was such a coincidence, a happenstance occurrence, that my girlfriend is here on a Monday morning, taking up my desktop computer, so I'm on my laptop sitting on the bed. These laptop speakers suck, even with decent EQ (whoa! did you know shift+tab backs up in the tab order? cool) so I grabbed some earphones.

If you're playing the song, pause it, and put in some headphones. (If you're not, do step one.) I hope you've got decent ones. (If you're looking for sub-$50 headphones, I recommend these Sony fontopias. If you want better headphones, get a proper custom made headphone amp [it'll be way cheaper than buying retail] and some Sennheiser HD-595s.)

Now play it.

Stop reading and listen!

I guess it is said that this band is unique because they construct their songs on mixing software, but then they learn to play the songs live and record that. You can hear it, because the music definitely has that constructed loop-based feeling but everything feels organic and alive.

It's a shame, then, that other bands can't figure this out. Imagine how little Radiohead would suck right now if they would just play real instruments on their records? Or at least not try to make them sound like robotic computer generated bullshit. Not to get down on Radiohead randomly, but I remember when they made music, you know? Stuff that sounded organic and alive, full of beauty. Listening to Radiohead now is like walking through the Blade Runner set, awkward Vangelis synths hounding you, big black emotionless buildings towering over you, et al.

Menomena, by comparison, sound rich and lovely. Their music is probably no less weird (if not weirder), but when you listen closely you can hear all the attention to detail. You can hear breathing, fingers sliding across strings, they play with echos, and place sounds around your head in various ways. Their songs live. They might have been gestated within a computer but they have emerged screaming organic little shits that kick ass.