In a week packed full of Laneway sideshows of nearly every act that appeared at the ever-growing festival, Menomena at the East Brunswick club was the hot ticket for Wednesday night. The Portland trio turned quartet have been riding a wave of buzz since releasing their fourth long-player Mines.
Opening the night was Melbourne’s own Tobias Cummings, whose mix of delicate vocals, soulful grooves and interesting sounds kept the audience attentive. Comparisons to such bands as Coldplay or Radiohead are easy to make. However, his songs are unique and the layers added by his multi-instrumentalist (who covered an array of instruments including guitar, lap steel, organ, electronic sounds and vocals) are absolutely vital to this.
The crowd had doubled in size by the time Menomena were ready to appear. And after some serious technical issues, which were described by one audience member as ‘just like camping’ (in tents=intense), a comment to which the band seemed to discover comedy gold in, they launched into fan-favourite Muscle’n Flo. If the exuberance of their opening track was anything to go by, we were in for a good show.
Menomena’s mix of Flaming Lips-esque drumming, classically inspired piano, scratchy guitar and vocals that whisper in your ear before biting it off are the foundation to their unique and inimitable songs. The instrumentation itself is enough to validate a volume of encyclopaedias, with various members of the band swapping between guitars, keyboards, organ bass pedals, baritone sax, percussion and vocal duties. It would seem that these four gents are keen multi-taskers.
Covering material off their latest release Mines and wildly successful third album Friend and Foe, their set flowed with trademark cacophony and serenity. Songs such as Queen Black Acid and Taos gave the audience a good idea of where the band’s sound is heading. Dirty Cartoons with its hook ‘I’d like to go home’ had the crowd singing along in perfect harmony while disagreeing whole-heartedly with its message.
All the while, Menomena never once lost an ounce of energy as they churned through their set list, despite lead singer Justin Harris suffering from a cold, having to ‘take sips of tea every now and then’.
The band’s sense of humour saw them move gracefully through a couple of technical issues in the latter half of the set. As drummer Danny Seim’s microphone was muted he proclaimed ‘that’s exactly what I would do to the drummer if I was a sound guy’. After an amazing encore performance of The Pelican, newly added keyboardist/guitarist Paul Alcott farewelled the audience by informing us that we could ‘scream yourselves hoarse, we really have nothing else to play’
It’s this type of stagecraft and comfort in front of an audience that can only be achieved after ten years of hard work and touring. By the time they had finished their set, Menomena had cemented their place as one of the highlight acts of 2011 so far.
– Nigel Moyes
