Menomena
I Am The Fun Blame Monster

"Can you hear me? Is anyone up there? I need to talk to you. Can you hear me? Mercury Rev, Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, my old loves. Can you hear me or not?? Come on, send me a sign!! Why don’t you answer me? Are you mad at me? Maybe because I’ve spoken badly about you lately??? Well, anyway. I just wanted to tell you that your work wasn't in vain. No, it wasn't. The seeds you planted have borne fruit. Yes, they have borne fruit. And, for me, it is a true consolation that for three who are either disbanded or creatively departed (or not feeling so well), at least one is born... . . . "

That the things of the world are all connected and that everything is governed by chance, where by chance is meant the impossibility of identifying, along the river that connects causes and effects of the world’s events like a St. Anthony chain, the true source of everything that happens to us, what we do, and our choices, I certainly do not discover today.

But I have recently had confirmation of this.

Days ago, I was distractedly searching the web for the lyrics of "The Abandoned Hospital Ship", when, while searching within a page returned by the search engine for a reference to the song by the Flaming Lips, I find:

"In the past, we also did some covers, for example, we opened our first concert with The Abandoned Hospital Ship by the Flaming Lips. If I didn’t play with Menomena..."

Now, a few days later, I find myself saying: "If I didn’t play with Menomena"?? But why on earth, you, Justin and Brent, shouldn’t you play with Menomena? Why should you deprive us of this music so clothed in freshness and novelty, and at the same time so heir to the splendid crooked music that a certain American indie scene, led by those three old loves of mine, and my beloved Flaming Lips, bestowed on us years ago?

Why should you deprive us in the future of albums like this I Am The Fun Blame Monster, of songs like E is Stable, with those "short regular notes" of perhaps synthesized slide guitar and that piano arpeggio (so reminiscent of The Sophtware Slump) so evocative made of high notes, resting unstably on a semi-confidential singing, turned into a soft spoken word and reverberated at the end?
Or like The Late Great Libido (perhaps the most catchy song), with that Mr. Blue Sky by ELO rhythm, which makes the foot tap, interrupted and disturbed yet at regular intervals by a romantic piano, a low sax solo (sic), and many other strange instruments (vibraphones, etc).
And again Strongest Man in the World, with that free drumming and the synth carpet made of detached and regular chords, occasionally interrupted by those even more romantic piano inserts.
And all along the album, a bit of electronics in the right place and never intrusive, and a great creative chaos.

In short, in the end, who should I thank for this discovery?

Perhaps the Flaming Lips (there's clearly a lot of them, like a lot from the spleen of certain 80s music)?
Or the search engine (I won’t name it to avoid advertising)?
Or Debaser, without which perhaps there would have been no reason to conduct that web search?

Yes, I think the last one I mentioned is true.

This review is yours, you are its primary cause.

It belongs to you, in fact, you wrote it...

Until next time.