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Each track on their fourth boasting a captivating blend of experimentalism and depth.
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Despite its experimental genesis, Mines is an incredibly relatable indie-pop gem.
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Mines is Menomena at its best-mentally relentless and physically ruthless.
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The starburst drum-fills, the jackknife stabs of guitar, the vocal melodies bronzed with catchiness-all of it soars, nodding at vitality, as though the aesthetics of joy might, if stressed enough, smother sadness until it's finally gone for good.
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It's rare when every member of a band can claim both vocal and instrumental contributions to an album, and even more rare when each contributor is exceptionally talented.
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There's a lot of room for your ear to roam on Mines, and it reveals itself over the course of a few listens as a very satisfying album worth exploring and revisiting.
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It's a slow, über-democratic process that, on the band's fourth album, results in sputtering post-rock à la early Flaming Lips that varies wildly from song to song.
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Drifting between order and disarray, Menomena's fourth album is like an exercise in controlled chaos.
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Alternative PressThe Portland, Oregon, trio trade their micro-fragmented structures for indie-pop opuses drenched in linear tensions on the meticulously crated Mines. [Aug 2010, p150]
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Although fourth album Mines, released three years after its predecessor, retains Menomena's trademark virtuosity in production, here the band's complex, monolithic sonic structures are supported by a consistent emotional foundation that elevates the songs to new heights.
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With Mines, Menomena have shown that they are a trio of reliably progressive, thoughtful musicians.
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It's cohesive, it's tight and it illustrates the band's continuous depth and attention to subtlety.
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Mines is thoroughly what one has come to expect from Menomena: an album that is titanic in scope, filled with offbeat wordplay, and entangled instruments.
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Mines is one of the better rock albums to come out this year, and yes, it's interesting.
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As usual, band members pile multiple textures onto one another in baroque, overpopulated juxtapositions.
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This is an album as hard to predict as it is to nail down into one stylistic category, which proves to be its greatest strength.
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Simply, Menomena are a band that sounds completely familiar but totally different.
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Under The RadarMaturity suits Menomena's Mines just fine. [Summer 2010, p.79]
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Drama aside, space is Menomena's final frontier, and they use it to great effect.
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The details are stacked on in such neat pieces--background piano arpeggios here, a couple of skronking guitar notes there--that it's all reduced to very well executed window dressing.
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Previously, that technique fostered playfulness, but Menomena's fourth album mostly just broods.
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MojoMines dips and twists spindly, telescopic guitar lines, taut coils of rhythm and controlled electronic pulses. [Oct. 2010, p. 100]
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In practice, there's nothing particularly challenging about Mines.
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Q MagazineThey seem ground down by arguments. [Oct 2010, p.111]
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UncutIt's audacious stuff, but emotionally unengaging, with the lyrics being the weakest link and those songs remaining ultimately elusive. [Sep 2010, p.99]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 16
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Mixed: 1 out of 16
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Negative: 1 out of 16
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Oct 11, 2012
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Sep 8, 2010