Despite all the technological advances since the late 1940s, making a rock & roll album hasn't really changed much. The formula remains:
- Geeks or egomaniacs or outcasts or artsy-fartsys get together.
- Dream about being famous.
- Decide to break their parents' hearts and stop taking their oboe/harp/bagpipe lessons, so they can learn to play guitar.
- Form a band.
- Jam endlessly until they get the right context for their words.
They record the finished article and release portable copies of their work for public consumption. It's a very time and labor-intensive process that can sometimes force ardor to replace art.
Then there's Menomena. Menomena are a 3-piece outfit from Portland, Oregon that makes their rock & roll in a really interesting way. The lead singer described the band as "too impatient to 'jam' for hours on end to perfect a song," so they developed their own approach to making rock songs. They use a sampling program that one of their members developed to record short musical phrases that they later layer and loop together to make a backing track. In essence, they put their music together like a puzzle, sifting through little pre-made pieces until they find some bits that complement each other. This approach makes for some beautifully fractured rhythms and allows their songs to have a weirdly modular quality. Skittish drums, ghostly guitars, and haunting piano notes pop in and out of songs not sounding entirely organic nor entirely sampled. When executed perfectly, like on "Wet and Rusting" (the clear standout of their 2007 release Friend and Foe), the music has an instant and lasting effect.
So, Menomena's proven you can take the endless jamming out of rock & roll and still make great songs, now someone work on bringing back the oboe...because we know that bagpipe rock's just silly.
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