Pitchfork

The Oneida of Secret Wars were a favorite band in training. The record paid homage to krautrock mainstays Can and Kraftwerk while dishing out thick, dissonant arrangements. In a nutshell: All music-dork killer, no hipness-jaded filler. Reductive, yeah, but the band earned the comparisons-as-compliments: "Caesar's Column" was the best song since, like, "Clocks". It rocked, was anthemic, and had the lacerating guitars and intricate arrangement to make Hella kid wet himself.

The Oneida of The Wedding are much less eager to please. The new full-length is playfully scatterbrained, careening from shamanic, drone-backed narcotics ("The Eiger", "Charlemagne") to hypnotic rockers ("Lavender", "You're Drifting"). I'm no longer convinced Oneida are happy to master favorite band referentiality. I mean, it's like they're settling into their own, profoundly complex voice, content to ride out any turbulence along the way. Stubborn kids.

Just settling in? On this, their seventh album? Precisely. Any band willing to mess with self-exploration at this point in their career have either got nothing to lose or plan on sticking around. Having established a sizable following, Oneida would be jerks to call this their swan song when there's this collection of vibrant, unexplored tributaries begging to be rafted down. "The Eiger" laces grunting, polyrhythmic strings under nightingale vocals with palpable feeling. "Lavender" evokes Boredoms and Parts & Labor in its organ atmospheres and steady snare slams while tucking in a slyly harmonious vocal. Tuneful vocals, wha? I thought this was soupy psych-rock hour?

Well, technically it still is. But gone here is the Glass-ian stoicism of the band's erstwhile material. In its strongest moments, The Wedding balances emotionally vulnerability atop card-houses of mind-numbing repetition. Only "Spirits", which capitulates to white guy sitar fetish á la "The End" and "Did I Die"-- the album's requisite random primal scream therapy-- feel out of place. This isn't a new Oneida, but a veteran band fortified for the long haul. Brooklyn prides itself on its intrepid tyros-- by its longevity standards, Oneida are a veritable high-school sweetheart story. Hopefully come 2015 they'll still be pwnin' noobs.

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