Brent Knopf is one third of Menomena, a band I've unabashedly lavished praise on here and who I feverishly await a new album from, and this is his first solo album featuring a exhausting cast of Portland musician guest appearances. The album as a whole is beautiful, taking some of the more gorgeous parts of Menomena's sound and throwing them into a nearly ridiculously pensive direction.

That's my one misgiving about Intuit, the album is so pensive, almost claustrophobic in a way, that's just kind of hard for me to listen to. A couple tracks into it I already start to feel emotionally exhausted. There's no levity here, no light moments, just a fist that keeps clenching tighter and tighter the whole way through.

One of the other guys from Menomena, Danny Seim, has his own solo project Lackthereof (which I'll post a song from tomorrow) and it's great to listen to these two guys back to back because it's clear where they intersect in Menomena. Knopf brings the emotion to the music and Seim brings the playfulness in drum beats and vocals. There's a joy to hearing the artists of a great band work on their own, like McCartney and Lennon splitting apart finally, because it makes you appreciate the combination of them even more. There's nothing wrong with Ramona Falls, it is absolutely beautiful, but without Seim balancing out Knopf's foreboding feelings, it's almost too much for this listener to handle.