Music

Menomena

Friend and Foe (Barsuk)

By David Downs 

"Take it!/When I'm not looking!/Take it from the hook while it's still kicking!/Don't you feel it when I start reeling!" The fishing metaphor accompanying the stalking piano riff on the opening of "The Pelican" is an apt metaphor. Friend and Foe's bait is friendly Portland, Oregon, post-rock, but the hooks (oh, the hooks) go deep, and when Menomena pulls you to the surface, there will be gasping and disorientation. This band seemed so nice on its 2004 debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster. "I have a close friend who's just been so supportive and he said, 'Man, you can stop now. This is too depressing, it's too much of a downer record. You can't release this,'" says guitarist Brent Knopf. But by late 2006, the band's planned basement-recording time had tripled from four months to a year. "We were running out of time," Knopf says. The album reflects the tumult. Using bass, drums and piano — with healthy splashes of guitar, keyboards, sax, glockenspiel and some digital effects — Foe channels the anxiety of three men turning 30 amid needy wives, needy mortgages and critical success perversely heaped atop financial insolvency. ("It's high time we step outside, drop the gloves and settle this like men," the three sing on "Rotten Hell." They might be talking about one another.) But Foe picks its fight with the idea that a great record has to cost $50,000 to make. "We had four shitty mikes instead of one this time," Knopf recalls. They make up for it with inspiration, perspiration — and maybe a couple of bloody noses.