Sometimes it’s hard to tell a bad trip from a good one. When things are truly extreme they just are, and what seems unbearable at one moment can lead to elation and laughter in retrospect.
The new double-LP from Oneida is one of the most extreme albums I’ve heard recently. Perhaps one of the most extreme rock albums ever (besides Metal Machine Music, of course). Like Sun Ra’s The Magic City, it just is. It was tough to get a handle on Each One Teach One the first time through, but when you give up trying things get a lot better. Listening to this stuff is like entering an alternate universe, fully realized in sound, and you may have to accept rather than judge, at least initially. On a more mundane level Each One Teach One is also the final recording from the original Oneida quartet that included Papa Crazee, he of the long black hair and Jack Daniel’s. Crazee has left the band to pursue his own country & western-type projects.
Back to that bad-turning-good/good-turning-bad thing. "Black Chamber" could be the single if we lived in another alternate universe where Oneida was on the radio all the time. An unholy blend of clattering percussion, twinkling music-box melodies and stabbing guitars, the track lopes along while the guys sing sensually about "a million tiny insects crawling all over our skin/if I were to kill them all, where would I begin?" A few lines later, though, "I hear the talk about me but my ears turn into jewels." Now that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
"Sheets of Easter," however, is 14 minutes of layered, droney, repetitive, sludge reminiscent of both Lightning Bolt and the Stooges. It’s kind of scary, really. So is "Sneak into the Woods," with its dark, burbling organ sounds and distorted, claustrophobic vocals explaining that "there’s a world out there/but I wanna be with you." "Antibiotics," the third LP side, is another long, mostly instrumental tour de force, with organ riffs riding along and colliding at high speed on massive amounts of compressed energy, then collapsing into a hymn-like chant, pharmaceutical science and religion in one.
Oneida’s album from last fall, Anthem of the Moon, was described in these pages as a blend of Led Zeppelin and Suicide. Each One Teach One is like that, too, but more Amon Duul II than Zep. But why compare? The plain fact of it is that every single track on Each One contains more sonic variety and energy than most other bands’ entire albums, the three-minute numbers as much as the epics.
Oneida is a band that transcended its influences long ago. Anthem was a personal top-10 of 2001, but Each One is even better. The two have one track in common, "People of the North," and the different versions epitomize the difference between the albums. On Anthem, the song is alluring, dreamy and sensual, albeit with dark undertones. On Each One it’s angrier, even apocalyptic, with a lot of additional synth blurts and buzzes that distract the listener like, well, a million tiny insects. Oneida are dedicated sonic warriors, and if Anthem was a sort of martial retreat, a vision quest in the desert, then Each One Teach One is the actual battle royale. It’s harrowing, but it’s also a triumph. You might even laugh about it when it’s over.
