Archive for Friday, August 22, 2008
CD review for Oneida
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Oneida
Steamboat Springs — "Preteen Weaponry"
Oneida's "Preteen Weaponry" is not immediately accessible. Or, more accurately, Oneida's "Preteen Weaponry" is not, at any point in its 39-minute instrumental run time, easy to get at.
The starkly minimal but surprisingly busy piece - there's not a lot of different elements, but there is a lot of noise - is considerably headier than Oneida's previous, prolific body of work. Since the Brooklyn band's 1997 debut, Oneida hasn't been easily pegged into a specific or digestible category of music. But until "Preteen Weaponry," the band's varied alternative, noise, punk, pop and surf rock output has been confined to a regular, 3-minute-song format.
The first part of a thematic trilogy titled "Thank You Parents," this record doesn't want anything to do with that. "Preteen" is divided into three, 10-minute-plus tracks that drudge across the amplified rock landscape. It does this in a format that's closer to the minimalist movement than it is to anything a rock band might consider.
Luckily, the guys in Oneida know what they're doing, and they navigate a potentially disastrous shift in style by breeding familiarity through battering-ram drums and simple bass lines, and by infusing this recording with the kind of energy you might expect from a live set in a particularly small, dank and sparsely populated music club.
Rating: '''
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