In an interview with the Straight prior to her band’s opening for the Bloc Party in March, Smoosh drummer Chloe gave a surprising answer when asked about her current favourite acts. She mentioned Menomena, a Portland trio with a complex, quirky sound that might seem like an unlikely choice for a 12-year-old, even one in a pop band. Asked if she’d like her own group, a duo with her 15-year-old sister, to go in a more Menomena-like direction, Chloe said, “I wish! We’re trying to get more experimental.”

When told of this response, Menomena’s Brent Knopf says it makes his day. “That’s funny,” says the keyboardist-guitarist, reached at his Portland home. “We’re trying to sound more like Smoosh.”

A worthy goal, to be sure. But for now, at least, Menomena is stuck sounding like itself. On Friend and Foe, the group’s second disc, that means simple pop melodies fitted between, around, and on top of clattering rhythms and frisky, multilayered arrangements. Knopf, drummer Danny Seim, and bassist Justin Harris add glockenspiel, sax, bells, and whatever else is at hand when recording, and their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach can be heard in numbers like “Muscle’n Flo”. Friend and Foe’s opening track matches a hooky vocal line to a lurching beat as the instrumental mayhem increases. In “Wet and Rusting”, the band adds burbling bass, competing vocals, and tinkling piano until the track swells from acoustic folk into epic electronica.

Members alternate vocals, and Knopf gets his turn to shine on “My My”. Against a shifting backdrop of organ and electric and acoustic guitars, he sings in a tentative voice, “What if all my enemies were dead?” and “What if everyone was right?/Should have taken their advice.”

“The general idea is coming to grips with negative experiences,” he says, “and getting to a place of peace about them. It’s about Popsicle sticks on a sunny summer day.”

Menomena’s sound is derived at least partly from a digital looping program, nicknamed Deeler, which allows band members to easily try different parts.

“It’s an idea repository,” Knopf notes. “Every song except for one was a byproduct of a Deeler session.” The band messes around until someone has an idea, which is then recorded and set to a click track. The program plays back the idea and band members pass headphones back and forth and record whatever comes to mind. “Before you know it, you have two or three dozen ideas that work together.”

Menomena’s ambitions aren’t restricted to its recording and writing process. The trio also likes to take on the odd interdisciplinary challenge, such as penning tunes for an Oregon cable-TV personality named Sista Social and composing for an experimental-dance company called Monster Squad. “We’d never thought of doing something like that,” Knopf says. “It’s whatever strikes us as making sense at the time. We’re open to all sorts of different opportunities, though at the moment I’m most interested in making records.”

Sadly, perhaps, those albums are doomed to sound like they were made by three scruffy 20-somethings from the hipster enclave of Portland—and not by two teenage girls from Seattle.

Menomena plays the Red Room on Saturday (June 2).