Menomena

Well blow us if 'Muscle ‘N Flow’ by Menomena wasn’t one of the best tracks of the year. And continue blowing if the record that birthed it, Friend And Foe, isn’t also a highlight of the annum.

So it’s with considerable joy that your humble DiS scribe trots to Hoxton to see Portland’s latest great band in relatively small surroundings. Even if it is in Hoxton.

And the wee setting proves best for showing of Menomena as a proper three-piece. Not like the Police, or the fellow Portlanders the Gossip, but as one in which the three members’ – Brent Kopf, Justin Harris and Danny Seim – skills are all equally showcased. Harris dives between saxophones, bass, guitars and main vocals, while Knopf fiddles away behind a layer of keyboards, glockenspiels and guitars that help bring the likes of 'Wet And Rusting', with its twiddly, classical piano refrain, to thrusting dramatic life. Meanwhile drummer Seim carries lead and backing vocals are various point while powering away at his skins. It's nice to see.

They may be more experimental than most, but never ever let pop sensibilities wriggle away. Leftfield experimentation waddles hand in hand with melodies and_ good grief if that isn’t the secret of good, nay _great, music, from Bowie to Radiohead to the Flaming Lips. It’s exalted company, and clearly Menomena aren’t quite there yet; they drift off a bit after unleashing the highlights of_ Friend and Foe _a trite early. But they carry on with such delightful energy that the attention spans drop as little as the temperature in the room. Not very much. You got that though, didn't you? Yep? Just checking.

Anyway, they go down so well that they’re forced to play an unplanned encore of Pearl Jam’s 'Jeremy', which Harris prefaces by telling the crowd that it’s “going to be the lamest encore ever”. It sort of is, but by this point who cares: they don’t make many of them like this. By God they should.