New Music: Menomena - Mines

Portland's Menomena are a three piece indie rock band that's starting to make a lot of noise, both figuratively and literally. The band's third proper album, Mines, came out yesterday on Barsuk records and is definitely worth your time and hard earned dollars. I only got into the band after their fantastic last album, Friend and Foe, which still contains one of my future posts for Favorite Songs Of The 2000's list, 'Wet and Rusting'.

The feeling of a band bursting at the seams that permeated Friend and Foe is found here as well in Mines. 'TAOS' is a great example of Menomena in full on freak mode with horns to boot. That track is followed by 'Killemall' which showcases the fact that Menomena can write a really great song that sounds like something you might hear on mainstream radio.

The best moments on the album is when the weirdness and solid melodies come together. Tracks like 'Dirty Cartoons', 'Tithe' and 'Oh Pretty Boy, You're Such A Big Boy' all have everything that is great about this band found within them. I try only to do full write ups of albums I really do love, and count Mines among them. The band released an album with no weak tracks and so many moments of brilliance that it's going to hard not to put this in my top 10 albums of 2010.

Also a friendly reminder that Menomena will be at The Bottleneck in Lawrence on Tuesday, October 12th.

-Matt