For anyone looking for indie rock saviours (ha!), Enon are perhaps the closest, don't you think?

"Saviors," I dunno, I just think of them as a really good rock band making really interesting records. Both of the previous albums I've got are aces.

2. "Natural Disasters," on High Society, was one of my very favorite singles of 2002.

3. Yeah, they're great.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but their "Nightmare of Atomic Men" is one of the most perfect singles of the last few years. Campy vampire funk with a noise breakdown, and catchy as hell.

Bruce, don't forget there's a Blonde Redhead connection as well as the Brainiac one.

As for the new one, there're more songs by Toko Yasuda (I think I saw an interview in which John Schmersal claimed this) and they are fine electro-pop. They make me feel guileless and happy to be alive. It's impossible to be bored with the songs oh it. I'd say it was a fairly even balance between pop and rock. But that doesn't do it justice. It's very beat-driven and rhythmic, too.

Opener "Shave" is plain gorgeous pop.

There's one song that sounds like Nina Persson fronting New Order doing a cover of Talking Heads (with some Mark E. Smith type vocals thrown in). Then there's a back and forth boy-girl dialogue over warm synths that is just amazing ("Murder Sounds").

The next song ("Storm the Gates") opens like a White Stripes song, with mid tempo blues rock guitar riffage, then morphs into a Beatles-esque ballad (very faint echoes of "Yesterday").

Toko does some amazing (and weirdly sexy) vocal work on "Daughter in the House of Fools".

I could go through it song by song, but I don't want to prejudice anyone either way. I love it, though. Pretty much every song. The songs I already talked about are arbitrary picks, really.

Even the sleeve makes me laugh -- a gatefold on a CD! Mentalists.

(You must be in Canada, Bruce. Where abouts?)

And J:

splotches of total genius.

Yes. You nailed it. That's what I keep thinking when I play it.

(Apologies for gushing. I'm a little enthusiastic about this band right now.)

Anyway, I was lucky enough to snap up a used advance copy of Hocus-Pocus at the local store, and while it doesn't quite reach the neon stylishness of High Society (there's something dismayingly plain-brown-wrapper about the production), it's still a fun album.

Everyone's fave noise-poppers, Brooklyn's Enon, have moved to East Falls. "They rang me from a Wawa and I was like… there's no Wawa in Brooklyn," > says just-back-from-Berlin Dave Doughman. Look for Swearing at Motorists' Doughman to play painter Dean Rosenzweig's Union 237 close-out Jan. 28.

www.enon.tv is thankfully not the monstrosity that it was around the time "High Society" came out, although the embedded MP3 loop is a nicely hideous touch.

Their new one is quietly out (somewhat quietly, anyway). I'm really in the wrong mood to evaluate it as I have a headache and it's a little on the rocking, trebly-vocal side. Even so the little part of my brain that isn't throbbing is moderately interested. Anyone who wasn't up all last night taking care of a crying infant care to comment?

(And I sort of agree with the premise of this thread, although at this point I'm leaning towards close but no cigar.)

my interest in this band has steadily increased since the girl joined. how many songs does Toko sing on the new one?

haha totally the opposite of what I was trying to say, I meant decreased, they've been real spotty for me since Believo!

I was wondering about that, since the girl joined on album #2.

Anyways, I didn't count, but I think the vocal split is close to 50/50. The difference on this one is that there's not as much of a divide between "her" songs (electronic) and "his" songs (guitar). It's much more of a rock album than they've recently done.

I really wanted to like it, and I really don't at all. It's funny to think that around the time High Society came out, they seemed unstoppable to me, and were one of my favorite bands. A few live performances I saw around that time were amazing, still some of the greatest gigs I've ever attended.

Hocus Pocus was just bleh (the fact that the best songs were actually Toko numbers was telling), and Grass Geysers Carbon Clouds is more Enon-by-numbers, if such a thing can exist. I guess I still use High Society as my benchmark Enon record, and there's nothing on the new one that even comes close to the heights they reached on "Disposable Parts", "Salty", "Natural Disasters", and "In This City". In general, somehow drummer Matt Schultz (one of the BOADRUM77 drummers, too) seems really underutilized on this new one, where I always found him to be an integral source of creativity on their past albums.

Best song: "Paperweights", and it only really stands out in comparison to the sea of boring surrounding it. It's one of the only tracks that sound like a song only Enon could pull off. The following song "Labyrinth" should be really great, and has a wicked instrumental near the end, but Toko's singing just ruins it, really.

I'd take that little release they had about 5 years ago, the one with all instrumentals that came in the floppy-disc sleeve, over this, and that's a shame, because it reminds me that back then they seemed to be able to just toss off brilliance without even trying.

Uh, gotta love this review from Stylus:

"Toko Yasuda has fulfilled her role as neon chanteuse or grounded femme foil to Schmersal’s marble-mouthed idealist, but on tracks such as “Collette” and the doomsday march of “Pigeneration” she becomes a formidable sparring partner—playing along in the cathartic celebration. Not as kooky as Satomi of Deerhoof or wistfully dire as Kazu from Blonde Redhead, Yasuda’s tone is one of urgent calm and within Enon’s blitzkrieg of tangled chords and drummer Matt Schultz’s organic dance beats she’s warning the future with breathy indifference."

Hmmm...now why would he compare Toko to those two singers?

Not as wild as Yoshimi or as old as Yoko Ono, either.

I mean, she was *in* Blonde Redhead, and Enon do occasionally sound a lot like BR, so that makes sense.

is there a snappy "gaysian"-type term for asian girls in indie bands?

gd high society is ice magic

hey, remember Enon?

I pulled out Believo! this week and my favorite tracks (Rubber Car, Get The Letter Out, Come Into) are still great. The moodier, less propulsive tracks also still mostly sound good though I forget them when they're over. I saw them play in 02 and they were terrific. Pretty sure this was my gateway into checking out Brainiac. Never seriously dug into the later albums for some reason, though I remember digging "In This City." Imagine I'll remedy that now.

I wonder if this particular vein of indie rock (struggling to describe it tbh) has any currency these days. Do the youth care about Enon?