This last Friday eve I had the chance to catch the band Menomena, which shared a bill with Robbers on High Street and The Nationals. Menomena is something special. Where the Robbers on High Street are a good indie band—distinctive but formulaic, Menomena is a unique blend of techniques, genres, and influences. Theirs is an experimental programme, tempered by a knowledge of true pop, true rock. They can frustrate expectations—indeed every track does so—but they're no strangers to musical pleasure or tasty hooks.

Menomena lyrics can be awfully boyish and vaguely self-absorbed—there's a lot of "I" in these songs—but the vocals don't dominate and the band's not pretentious; they're just infused with an anxiety of identity. They're artists wondering who they are and where they stand.

The sound of the group culls from places where I expect to find Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins, but also Múm and the landscapes of Kinski and Labradford, even a valley of Björk. Their drummer is of the first order (certainly in athleticism, probably in beat-keeping too) and it's exciting to hear a martial drum beat intermixed with an ingenuous xyllophone melody that might have come from the mobile above my crib. When the bari sax enters, syncopated against all that, you know Menomena has arrived.

Check out their disc, "I Am the Fun Blame Monster," an anagram of "The First Menomena Album."