

Secret Wars (CD)
With their new full-length record, Brooklyn sons Oneida simply start where they left off with "Each One Teach One," their highly acclaimed and soon-to-be classic double CD and LP. But these purveyors of righteous noise and indignation never stop in the first place. Almost immediately after wrapping "Each One Teach One," they collaborated with the Liars on a split EP while touring both Europe and the United States. In the meantime, they also created "Secret Wars." Their trademark iterated and psych-tinged noise attack is still fully intact, both nervous and subdued at the same time -- like what happens when you give meditative children trained in the ways of yoga an excessive amount of caffeine. If there are any new wrinkles to be discovered, it is perhaps that, even more so than on "Each One Teach One" (Oneida's "Tago Mago"), Oneida seem to be mining the same fertile ground as Kraut-rock visionaries Can, effortlessly shedding the constraints of pop forms and structures while still remaining soulful and spiritually centered all along. Like spazzing out in the Lotus position. The album was recorded and mixed by Oneida at the Travel Agency and with Nicolas Vernhes (who recorded the most recent albums by Black Dice, Ted Leo, Fischerspooner, amongst others) at the Rare Book Room.![]()
| Tracklisting | |
| Disk | 1 | |
| 1 | Treasure Plane |
| 2 | Caesar's Column |
| 3 | Capt. Bo Dignifies the Allegations With a Response |
| 4 | Wild Horses |
| 5 | $50 Tea |
| 6 | Last Act, Every Time |
| 7 | Winter Shaker |
| 8 | Changes in the City |
| Anthony Gerace
- Toronto, , Canada |
| The press releases all said ?who would have thunk this American psych band would end up on a tiny Candian label??, but quite honestly, it seems almost appropriate. The new Oneida record is the most accessible thing they?ve done, if not the best (I?ll leave that to the intense metal catastrophe Each One Teach One), almost sounding like pop, most of the time sounding like a tamed down Comets on Fire, all of the time sounding great. I don?t know what makes me say it, but it belongs on Three Gut as much as it does Jagjaguwar. Bands like this seem to have trouble fitting anywhere, much less two labels, but the discomforting folk of both Jag and Three Gut seem to need a blast of pure psych, and they get it with Secret Wars, an album that is as much 70s-inspired pop (in the vein of Soft Canyon) as it is 70s inspired hard psych (in the vein of, uh? Parson Sound, or maybe Comets). This is a great record that shouldn?t be passed up. | |