This post was submitted by Zack Rosen

I sincerely hope that Justin Harris (far right) and the rest of his Menomena bandmates perform tonight’s show naked.

Menomena plays the Black Cat main stage tonight. Doors open at 8.

I’ve never been to Portland, but the band Menomena does a lot to affirm my mental picture of their home city. Based on their music, which is a mix of old-fashioned folk-pop melodies and slightly creepy computer effects, I can be pretty sure that the West Coast mecca of the laid-back would look much like an outdoor Apple store, where the natural beauty of the mountains and coast would be offset by an equally beguiling display of MacBooks and iPods.

Songs like Rotten Hell and Muscle’N Flo are organic enough to trust- you know that they were actually written by people- but have enough special effects to mark them as contemporary. This reflects Menomena itself, as all members play several different instruments but also record with the aid of computer program written specially by and for the band.

But back to Portland. The place is also known as a city full of nice people, and boy does Menomena sound nice. I spoke with Justin Harris, who shares in vocal and instrumental duties with Brent Knopf and Danny Heim, after much trial and tribulation. The first time I called he was having phone trouble and no one picked up. The next day, minutes into our second attempt at a conversation, the phone cut out mid-sentence and I had to wait for Justin to call me back when he was in phone range.

I was starting to think it couldn’t be worth it, but Justin was so friendly and forthcoming when we finally did talk that I could fully understand why, as you will read below, his fans would offer to make and serve him elaborate meat dishes.

The New Gay Zack: A lot of people want to know- where did your name come from?

Justin Harris: We thought it was from The Muppets, but we’ve come to find out it was written for softcore Swedish porn by some Italian composer in the ’60s. We played in Milan for the last tour, and we brought that up, we said it was written by an Italian guy, and they knew exactly who it was. They’ve had it in their culture since the ’60s and we all think it’s from The Muppets.

TNG: Have you ever done a cover of “Mahna Mahna”?

JH: There was probably a brief moment when we considered it, but we have enough people singing it to us wherever we go.

TNG: Is that annoying?

JH: It depends on the person. It has been annoying in the past, but that’s when its sung by a drunkard over and over again.

TNG: Well, if you decide to cover it in D.C. I certainly wouldn’t object.

JH: You can sing the lead.

TNG: That would be awesome! You guys have been through DC before. What did you think of it?

JH: I look forward to going back to D.C., last tour that took us to the East coast it was one of my top two favorite places.

TNG: Where are you right now?

JH: We’re driving from Boise to Salt Lake City, it’s about a six hour drive.

TNG: How do you kill all your time on the road?

JH: Today we’re sleeping, we had a late night last night. We hung out in the venue for a while, there were a lot of nice people there and the time got away from us. This really nice couple from Boise invited us to stay at their place, but we already had a hotel room so they made us a pot roast. We went over to their house at 3 a.m. and they fed us, it was pretty amazing.

TNG: With all your traveling, do you miss Portland?

JH: A little bit, I was only back there for four days between our European tour and this tour, I’m feeling a little homesick.

TNG: Between you and The Blow, and The Shins having just moved there, why do you think Portland’s becoming such a big city for indie rock right now?

JH: A lot of bands seem to be moving there, its just a testament to the livability of the city. It’s a very diverse city, accepting of a lot of ideas and projects, and it’s a very beautiful city to live in. Its kind of a nurturing place to live for artists in general, our experiences in Portland have been very positive, we’ve already gotten a lot of support from the local club owners. There’s the stereotypical musician who works at a coffee shop or some crappy job during the day, its one of the few remaining cities where you can have a decent standard of living while doing that.

TNG: Now that The Shins are there, are you getting compared to them a lot?

JH: No, we don’t get compared to the Shins very much, musically. That’s another thing about Portland, its never really felt that competitive. It just happens we know a lot of bands, we’re friends of bands who in the past who have been at a certain level and who we may have gotten to a higher level than and they’re still our friends. Everyone is happy for everybody, no matter what station they’re at. We’re certainly not on The Shins’ level by any means, but I think that if we were there wouldn’t be any sort of feeling of being dethroned or anything, we feel unique enough to hold our own. But that’s just my assumption. Maybe there some bands in portland that hate us because we’re driving around in a crappy 1995 dodge van.

TNG; Your sound varies between experimental and instrumental music and a more straightforward sound, like your current album. What dictates what kind of music you’ll be writing?

JH: We’re careful about trying not to do things that aren’t genuine to ourselves, when we’re writing were just responding to the things that we’re excited about at the moment. I’m excited to see what our next album will sound like,I imagine it will have similarities to the last three, but hopefully it will be a little different. We’ll see what happens come next winter, if we’re depressed it will be a depressing album. Hopefully we won’t be.

TNG: How much of your studio sound do you incorporate into your shows? Do you all switch instruments as frequently as you do on the album?

JH: We try to recreate as much as we can. We’re actually able to do quite a bit between the the three us, I can play guitar, glockenspiel, you name it. We try duplicate sound of any given song, but the recordings have lots of little nonsense that we don’t try to duplicate.

TNG: You guys actually created your own software for writing music. How’d this come about? What does it accomplish that you couldn’t do without it?

JH: It was a program that brent developed back when he was in college, it stores little loops of music that we create on the spot. It’s a real improvisational thing where we start with drums, record the drum loops, move on to different instruments and record those. All these loops are stored on the hard drive and then we go back and sift through them, and pick what we want, and change things. It’s a very early stage in the process for us.

TNG: Finally, and you might not know the answer to this, but in such a liberal city as Portland do you know if there is any kind of alternative gay culture?

JH: I think its probably the same as in D.C., there’s more just dance clubs than there are any alternatives.

TNG: Have you guys noticed any significant alterna-queer fan base?

JH: I don’t know, if we do they don’t make themselves known. I can say for certain my friends that are gay are fans, but I think they’re probably biased. hopefully the fandom can start, they can spread the word. There’s a theory I heard, I don’t remember who said it, that you cant truly be a superstar if you don’t have the gay community as fans. So I hope we [have gay fans,] because all I want us to be be is superstars.

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