mission freak!

[A dispatch from John C. Schlotfelt. See the photos here.]

Grinnell College’s Gardner Lounge almost couldn’t handle Menomena. The unassuming space which has played host to indie luminaries like Dismemberment Plan and Sleater-Kinney looks more like a venue for a dormitory battle of the bands than a stage for the blogger-lauded likes of Portland Oregon’s Menomena. (For Christ’s sake, there aren’t even stage lights, only standard fluorescent tubes breaking up the pattern of those oft-used white cardboard/foam tiles that decorate 98% of public ceilings.)

Following a set from openers Illinois, from Pennsylvania (that occupied a pleasant place between the banjo-stomps of Modest Mouse and the skittery Midwestern jangle of Tapes ‘n’ Tapes) Menomena and all their little toys took the stage. Halfway through the opening number, “Muscle’N Flow,” the fuse for stage left blew, leaving multi-instrumentalist Brent Knopf (the guy playing the Mac, not the bari-sax) twiddling his thumbs and drummer Danny Seim taking an unscheduled drum solo. Justin Harris chuckled and received wild hoots and applause after he re-named the track “Muscle’N Blow.”

After one more “technical difficulty” (for which the dreadlocked sound man apologized for profusely), the trio had a smooth set. With a set that clocked in at just under an hour and a half, the boys from the Pacific Northwest cracked a few jokes about corn and relied heavily on material of this year’s Friend and Foe. In fact dudes only left behind two Friend and Foe numbers (“Running” and my personal fav “Air Aid”), substituting in a few from their I Am The Fun Blame Monster repertoire to round out the set.

Despite being faithful to the album versions (almost to a fault), watching the trio manipulate their various knobs and pedals, tweaking their instruments just right to get that sound proved to be entertaining in itself. And bonus points go to drummer Seim for soldiering through, despite how high/sick/generally out of it he looked.