Sometimes even the longest journey ends close to where you started. Throughout the teens, Oneida pushed further and further into abstract, atmospheric sounds, recording long haunting compositions that couldn’t have been more different than the pulsing, hammering anthems of their past. But now they return with Success, their most guitar-centric, rock album in decades. It kicks off with “Beat Me to the Punch,” a song that is minimal like the best Ramones songs are minimal, pared back to beat and melody and a limited number of guitar chords. It’s an uncomplicated pleasure from the get-go, and if it’s ripped in half later by a corrosive guitar solo, well, what did you expect? This is Oneida.
Oneida has long straddled gray-area boundaries between the NYC punk/psych/rock world and the art/experimental world, playing at gritty rock clubs and elevated cultural institutions, including the Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, ICA London, MassMOCA and the Knoxville Museum of Art. The band has been known for extended live improvisational performances, collaborating onstage with Mike Watt, members of Flaming Lips, Portishead, Boredoms, Yo La Tengo, Dead C, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and many others. Oneida’s members juggle a wide variety of other music projects. Drummer Kid Millions has played with Spiritualized, Royal Trux and Boredoms and releases solo compositions under his own name and as Man Forever. Shahin Motia founded noise-punk’s Ex Models and currently plays in Knyfe Hyts. Kid and Fat Bobby perform and release music as People of the North, and Bobby has a band called New Pope (postpunk/minimalist duo/trio) releasing a second full-length this year (Shinkoyo).
No band is an island, so of course there are influences—the fuzzy clangor of the Velvet Underground, the keyboard-stabbing exhilaration of the Clean, the paranoiac lyricism of Suicide, the giddy wallop of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” the time-bending open-ended-ness of Can. Still, the main factor in Oneida’s sound is Oneida, specifically the band’s willingness to go where the music takes them, without too much calculation or premeditation.
Denny Kemps (Danny Kamps) has been performing and recording music in and out of the region for 15 years in various bands and projects. Danny plays in local bands Kendra and Omoo Omoo, but his solo material covers a lot of musical ground. Denny Kemps has, until recently, been a recording project. Denny Kemps albums are musical collages rooted in kosmische/krautrock/psychrock/jazz/folk/american primitive/ambient…Fuzz guitar and analog synthesizers for people who like listening to music in dimly lit rooms.
Creative Writing is a new project from some of the minds and fingers that brought you Luxor Rentals, Jeanines, and Huevos II (among other great western Mass NOW sounds). Fashioning tightly composed melodic pop nuggs delivered over waves of fuzz in a deadpan drawl like Alex Chilton is alive and well and living in New Zealand is the vibe of the day. Arpeggiation and on and on.
Doors are at 7pm and music will begin at 730. Seating is limited and first come first served; this show is ALL AGES!