Over the past ten years, no one's come close to matching Oneida's output of dazzlingly creative, uncategorizable music. Psychedelia, minimalism, maximalism, one-step, infinite-wave, etc. It's all there. "Happy New Year" is the Brooklyn band's most eclectic and coherent to date. It flows flawlessly from a traditional hymn of grim beauty through hypnotic rounds, thunderous kraut grooves, severe ballads, and other indescribable music. Guest appearances include Phil Manley of Trans Am, Emily Manzo of the Fucking Champs, Shahin Motia of Ex Models, Brad Truax of Home, and frequent Oneida collaborator Barry London.
Review by Marisa Brown
Reflecting the cyclical nature of earth and life itself, Oneida's eighth full-length album, Happy New Year, presents ideas of death and rebirth, and the continuity, and yet tenuousness, of existence. It's a poetic work of circling guitars and melodic phrases and vocal lines repeating and layered like monastic chants. The opener, "Distress," is comprised of a four-line phrase about the fleeting nature of beauty ("So fades the lovely blooming flower/Frail, smiling solace of an hour/So soon our transient comfort flies/And pleasure only blooms to die"), with modal harmonies and haunting, sparse background music, while the dark musings of "The Misfit" explore the notion of evil and perfidiousness, referencing perhaps the character in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." But the band isn't trying to present an image of hopelessness, of a hell, or even a limbo from which you can never escape. Rather, they seem to be exploring the realm of purgatory, where, though it may require a great deal of time and sacrifice, there is hope of redemption. Both "Up with People" and "History's Great Navigator's" offer suggestions for improvement ("Open your eyes, the things you see/Are determined by the height of the ground you seize" and "Cross your heart, hope to die/Calm your voice, set your eye/Turn your back and go," respectively) as the band grooves along with quick drums and purposeful noise; it's all very much planned, controlled, with Oneida, acting as Virgil, guiding listeners along. Though the screeches and rumblings that occur in some of the songs (though as an album, Happy New Year is much less hard than what the band has previously produced) may occasionally seem arbitrary, in fact everything is very tightly contained. The idea of messiness is only put there to add effect, not because Oneida are losing control of their message and their statement. The record may not promise happiness or salvation, but it does propose ideas that can be contemplated in the time between the winding melodies and riffs, and perhaps one day, we too, like the Pilgrim, can continue on alone.
Oneida
Happy New Year
[Brah/Jagjaguwar; 2006]
Rating: 7.2
A funny thing happened on the way from The Wedding: Oneida's triumphant 2005 release was ridiculously slept-on, the band's studio space was razed to make room for condos, and rumored plans for a sprawling three-disc follow-up called Thank Your Parents ended up as a measly 11 tracks. Tough year. But while the band is throwing up drywall at a new recording space, Happy New Year reflects the mixed blessings and emotions and makes the most of them.
Critics love to reach for multiple hyphens and obscure garage acts to namedrop when summing up Oneida's sound. Happy New Year lives up to both the band's own cross-genre daring and the critics' idea of Oneida more than any of their previous albums; accordingly, it's all over the place. Opener "Distress", a formless sketch of medieval choir-like vocals and toneless instrumental gurgling, could be another band entirely. "Happy New Year" is, if there's such a thing, Oneida-by-numbers, as a midtempo distorted organ tears through the fabric of the song while guitars jangle and wail around the corners. Singer Fat Bobby's plaintive lament anchors it all, moving from psychedelic phrases to concrete urban details of cups of coffee and bus rides home, all leading to a decision not to decide anything: "The sun withheld its light from me/ I said a prayer, a 'We shall see.'"
"The Adversary" picks up the pace, spinning upwards on its deep and steady groove like a tilt-a-whirl broken free from its hinges, with a simple but glorious three-chord release. But it lifts listeners higher just so "Up With People" can pull them down towards hell: With nearly eight minutes of disco drums and grinding, percussive, filthy guitar and organ, it's one of Oneida's closest calls to recreating their live sound. Predictably, it's also a monster and the highlight of the record.
The pinball plink of "History's Great Navigators" similarly stretches and comes close to that delirious peak, and closer "Happy New Year" weaves druggily to the album's finale on a two-finger piano part and half-speed drums-- one of the band's most successful mood pieces. The rest of Happy New Year's second half, however, is heavy with melancholy and contains some pretty safe moves for such an adventurous band. "Busy Little Bee" buzzes with Eastern scales and humming drones, a pleasant but obvious psychedelic nod; same with the militant rhythm and droning vocals of "You Never Can Tell". "Reckoning" is a huge surprise just for being so gentle and earnest in its acoustic soft-rock update.
"Chameleon" artists get a lot of love, but that's often because we can find the thread that holds them together-- there's always some indelible section of their personalities that binds their eclecticism and makes each track distinctively theirs. But while Oneida is indisputably versatile and has cred for miles, perpetually tearing their way through disparate styles in sweaty dives across the globe, there's no unifying principal here-- just songs that are kinda psychedelic, kinda groove-oriented, and kinda long. While not exactly a disappointment, Happy New Year is a whole lot of "kinda," a record built around hesitancy that clutches the payoff tight in its arms.
-Jason Crock, July 07, 2006
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