polaroids of androids

Menomena @ Lille Vega, Copenhagen - 05/03/2008

Wednesday night in Copenhagen saw a recent international favourite of ours, Menomena, grace the stage of the politely patronised and excellently staffed Lille Vega.

The trio got off to a slow start. Between the low sound levels, sedate audience and slightly out of sync members, the full impact of their recorded work on Friend and Foe was somehow lacking. Moving into older material however from previous album I Am The Fun Blame Monster, namely Strongest Man In The World, signified the turning point with the members finding their groove and locking in on each other to showcase how well they can work as a cohesive unit that is capable of putting out more than the sum of it's parts.

One of the most impressive and refreshing elements of the show was the stage layout, with the members being aligned across the front of the stage rather than defaulting to the drummer at the back, singer at the front formation. The fact that all three members contributed equally on vocals meant this made even more sense.

The crowd began to come around towards the latter half of the set, leaving a slight sense of tension behind caused by the band members putting everything they had into their performance only to be greeted with a lukewarm reception from the better portion of the audience. By the time fan favourite Wet and Rusting came around the band had fully found their stride, and the audience had in turn lost any inhibitions they had previously, to fully embrace the lilting minimalist melodies purveyed by keyboard/samplist/guitarist Brent Knopf, underpinned by the rock-steady rhythm of bassist/guitarist/saxophonist/Moog-Taurus playing Justin Harris, floating over the relentless racket coming from drummer Danny Seim.

The result was a climactic encore consisting of the faux-prog epic Monkey's Back to enthusiastic roars from the doting audience. Speaking with the baby faced Justin after the show led to the revelation that the band plans on touring their next - as yet unrecorded - album all the way down to Australian shores in the middle portion of 2009. If this show was anything to go by, then it is most certainly a date range to have penciled in to any self respecting music fan's calendar.