August 24, 2022 by A.S. Van Dorston

Veteran Brooklyn band rocks out again on their guitar-driven road trip/party of a fourteenth album.

Since debuting in 1997, Oneida has become one of the most prolific bands dealing in garage punk/psych, Krautrock and avant rock. Between 2008 and 2011 they released a trilogy called Thank Your Parents where the middle segment, Rated O (2009) was itself a triple album! They got even more experimental with A List of the Burning Mountains (2012) with two tracks nearing 20 minutes each where they toy with doom, drone and free jazz, and the sprawling mess of another double album, Romance (2018). The common element that keeps some sort of continuity between their incessant radical musical detours is the propulsive drumming of Kid Millions. Each One Teach One (2002) was one of their more accessible entry points, until now.

Oneida has gone down so many complicated rabbit holes, including four album length collaborations with some diverse artists like Pterodactyl and Rhys Chatham and live improvisational performances at high art institutions like the Guggenheim, that their big departure is to simply make a rock record. While they hadn’t completely abandoned their guitars for Fat Bobby’s (Bobby Matador) bleep-bloop-bleepy fuckery over the years, this is the first one in decades that does consistently rock, complete with a compelling motorik groove that may remind some of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s more propulsive work. But these geezers did all that years before those Aussies, mixing the Can groove with the chugging “Roadrunner,” the Bowery death marches of Suicide, New Zealand post-punk, and the raging guitar feasts of The Wipers.

It had been a while since they were all able to play together in the same room, and the happy reunion resulted in some rocking out. Perhaps they thought they ought to throw poor Double Shadow (Phil Manley from Trans Am and The Fucking Champs), who joined on guitar in 2006, only for the band to mostly abandon guitar oriented songwriting. Double Shadow shows his appreciation with a joyously squalling feedback solo at the end of “Beat Me to the Punch,” which kicks off with jangling guitars. Yes, Oneida jangled!

“Opportunities” kicks off with guitar feedback that sounds like they’re gearing up to rewrite “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” but instead, Fat Bobby gets his two cents in with some squelchy keyboard breakouts that hark back to Roxy Music era Eno. The centerpiece of the relatively succinct album (41 minutes) is a trio of fantastic motorik-punk numbers (“Low Tide,” “I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand,” “Paralized”) that meld Can’s “Mother Sky” with the roughed up energy of lesser known Stereolab labelmates Th’ Faith Healers, and touches of Oneida’s own unique noise and ambient experiments.

“Rotten” is about as catchy as a garage punk tune as they’ll ever write, and it’s really great. Success ends with the triumphant, sprawling noise fest of “Solid.” Their fourteenth album (not counting collaborations) may not be their most ambitious or accomplished, but it may be destined to be their most loved.