Oneida "Up With People"
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Despite their deeply mechanized, automated-sounding songs, Oneida still never fails to reveal themselves to me as somehow natural. I get a sense that they use their pummeling music to achieve transcendence through chaos—trying to reach some sort of higher state by weaving together, nay bashing together, a series of discrete dissonant elements. The guitars sound like drills pushed past their voltage limits and the drums, oh the drums, like a metal typewriter played by engine pistons, and the whole thing just thriving on repetition, looking for those galvanizing moments when things just sync up like turn signals of your car and the car in front of you at a stop light, but awesomer. “Up With People” (mp3) is Oneida to the nth degree, dispensing with melody and just riding roughshod over riffs for like 8 minutes. Riffs include lyrics, which are selective and sung over nothing but drums and are meant to be sung with guitar pick in hand like the Statue of Liberty: “Sunlight shines on the tops of the trees, the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze, you got to get up to be free.” And then, and then, and then.
Happy New Year hits Times Square and other places via Jagjaguwar on July 11.
ELSEWHIRR: S to the F-J speculates as to why “too-British” means “not-successful” in America. I’d add The Smiths and just about every 80’s/90’s Brit-Rock band (other than Oasis, who of course prove his rule by being mucho accessible re: Beatles.) Loverly prose here.
AUSSI: The best commencement address EVAH, delivered by WashPost scribe Gene Weingarten to the graduating class of the University of Maryland College of Journalism. Excerpt:
I want to congratulate you all upon your graduation from the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and wish you luck as you prepare to embark on exciting careers in telemarketing or large-appliance repair.
My point is, this is a challenging time for journalists.
And because you are word people, you understand that “challenging time” is a euphemism often used to describe disasters of epic proportions. For example, Richard Pryor was facing a “challenging time” when he ran down the street half-naked and on fire.
I really liked Secret Wars and The Wedding a lot and was looking forward to this new one!
The new Oneida album is great. I was going to do a post on my site but I realized it was hard to post a single song from it or even two. The songs really only make sense in the context of the whole album for me.
Also, that commencement address is amazing.