Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Review: Menkena @ City Tavern in Dallas (Hey, it's shoegaze!) Feb 6th

Have you ever tried to run in a pool? There's a feeling of permanent slow motion, as though you're about to die in a Hollywood action sequence. If you add a heavy dose of stargaze & shoegaze, you have Menkena. Saturday at the City Tavern was all the shoegaze you could stand in one night, which required as much Shiner Bock as I could muster. Menkena is a synaesthesia of a lot of elements. Mollasses. Syrup. Cosmic bathtub. Rooftop winter smoking. I imagine if you had mind altering substances, or an overdose of insulin, it would feel like a trip to the Milky Way, but if you're a member of a half-drunk Texas audience it can lean towards melodrama.

Menkena consists of Jimmy Menkena (guitar, vocals), Mike Simmons, Nolan Thies (of Little Black Dress local Dallas fame), and Brent Elrod. If you haven't seen Jimmy, he's an easy man to spot in a honky tonk--he has a sleeve of tattoos up both arms and a big scoop of curly black hair and thick chops which gives him the Alan Palomo look. I would love to post which Menkena songs were best, and which ones had the most exciting lyrical storytelling, but I was lost in two sensations that made me forget to get a tracklist:

1) Each song made me think I was the Silver Surfer, riding comet speed past Jupiter.
2) Wouldn't if be funny if I were running in slow motion to these songs with my hand outstretched towards the ocean?

Honestly, most Menkena songs sound the same. It doesn't mean they don't make it work--"Red in the Morning" has cool, slowburn guitar that The Edge would be proud of; "I'm One" is a good love song fix. But shoegaze is a take it or leave it genre. You either want it, or you don't. Menkena takes it on the way the Bravo Channel likes to air Real Housewives of Whatever City. It's all over the place, man. It's plastered on the walls. Each song was a cosmic wave of sound, a scintillating reverb of guitar; a acoustic wonderwall. Personally, I find Menkena the kind of band you'd want to go to alone, to nurse a beer and discover new thoughts. For your next Menkena show, bring your Moleskin. You'll be happy you did.

Menkena is in the studio now, according to their Myspace, so look out for an album at your local hang soon.

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