For a band with ten years of fiendishly imaginative recordings under its belt, this local trio has never gotten the accolades it deserves — they’ve been our own little secret. But on the heels of last year’s enigmatic chamber-rock freak-out The Wedding and the newly minted Happy New Year, Oneida have finally made the records that should get folks to bow down to their lysergic whims. While early recordings saw the band stumble into a stony kraut-rock groove for mind-numbing lengths of time, their latest features everything from the baroque ‘Busy Little Bee’ to the plodding piano experimentalism of ‘Thank Your Parents’. Song structure and length are still of little importance here, but melodically the band has come up with a unique songwriting style that sees them intertwining harmonies over gorgeous layered strings and atmospherics. Think Sabbath’s ‘Planet Caravan’ playing in conjunction with a warped and occasionally skipping Bach record. Maybe the best secrets are the ones no one would believe anyway.
Comments (0)