One of the new Dallas bands I'm lovin' lately is Menkena, a slow-burn shoegaze group made up of singer Jimmy Menkena, Mike Simmons (Tweed), Nolan Thies (Little Black Dress) and Brent Elrod (Sedan).

I saw one of the band's first shows a few weeks ago at Double Wide, and I left longing for a recording of the entire thing to listen to both early in the morning and late at night. It's that kind of music -- the kind that you want to put on during moments of ... reflection.

I just got off the phone with Menkena, 33, who talked to me about everything from his childhood Beatles obsession ("I literally thought they were the only band in the world when I was little.") to what inspires his dreamy lyrics ("I'm just sick of hearing songs about girls"). There's not time to cover all that right now, but it'll come.

The singer moved to Dallas a couple of years ago from Brooklyn, where he'd lived for more than a decade and played punk rock with the band INDK.

"When I came here, I had all these acoustic songs written, and wanted to put out a solo, Nick Drake-type album," the 33-year-old singer said (with his mild Brooklyn accent). "But I also had all these shoegaze-y, noise ideas that kept coming to me, and then they sort of found their way into that material."

"And once Mike heard the stuff, he had an idea to put together a full band, and I went with it."

So now the guys are starting to rework some of Jimmy's material and record new stuff at Toby Pipes' local studio. They're working on a single to put out first, and then they'll move on to a full-length album.

The song you're about to hear is one of the recordings Jimmy had done before his band came along. He actually recorded it in Brooklyn, and the rain and train sounds come from field recordings made outside a friend's apartment.

"'Feelin the Wait' is sort of a self-realization song. Writing songs takes me such a long time, and this one is about realizing that the waiting has to end. It's like, this is it," Menkena said. "This song actually helped get the ball rolling and put me in the right headspace for the project we're doing now. I'm 33 years old, I've been doing music since I was 13, but now the fire is burning hotter than ever."

Menkena, "Feelin the Wait":

Menkena's next show is June 13 at All Good Cafe. The combination of shoegaze and chicken-fried steak excites me to no end.

Posted by Hunter Hauk at 11:38 AM | Permalink
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