Pitchfork

At a Menomena live show, it becomes head-slappingly apparent how vital Danny Seim's drumming is to the Portland band's fractured, loop-based pop songs. Starting even before Menomena made their startlingly good 2003 debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster, Seim has released seven solo albums under the moniker Lackthereof. 2004's Christian the Christian was the first to receive proper distribution, and now a follow-up, My Haunted, is on the way via Portland label FILMguerrero.

From the forthcoming album, "The Columbia" relies less on Seim's crashing drums and more on lo-fi atmospherics, letting simple acoustic-guitar downstrums and multi-layered vocals build up around an insistent, baptismal mantra: "Float with me/ into the mouth of the Columbia." When drums eventually arrive, they give the song some echoey texture, but they never become the focal point they would be on a Menomena record. If it seems like three and a half minutes is a long time with so little variation other than textural, then keep in mind the Columbia River stretches for more than 1,200 miles. We all float on, all right?

MP3:> Lackthereof: "The Columbia"
[from My Haunted; due in December on FILMguerrero]