Ramona Falls - Russia

The first time I played this Ramona Falls' Intuit, it brought back a mood that I haven't felt since the first time I listened to Menomena's Friend And Foe. It was like some days when you step outside, and as you're walking you're overcome with a sense of general familiarity, you've had this sensation before, at some time and place in the past. I felt this, without even knowing that Ramona Falls is a project of Menomena's Brent Knopf. Ramona Falls and Menomena share several things - those eerie keyboard atmospheres, the within-song starts and stutters, and a palpable sense of drama.

The strange thing that happened here, though, is that I love Menomena, and did not expect to like Ramona Falls even more. Here's the fourth track from Intuit, which starts as a gently strummed folk song, enhanced with lush layers of plucked strings, and then an abrupt interruption of percussion, bass, and high-octave piano pulses, which is overcome by a rush of electricity, a breathtaking climax, built by a sonic wave swelling underneath you, rising with a hurricane of momentum, and at the height of it, it's pulled out from under you, gone, just like that, leaving you falling off, and wanting more. It's kind of like a first kiss.

Ramona Falls - Russia (mp3)

Intuit,, out August 18th on Barsuk.

Ramona Falls, by the way, is a real waterfall in Oregon: