By Bangers
5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: David Archuleta

Oneida – Expensive Air
Joyful Noise

After astonishing turn-of-the-century heads with their prescient blend of monolithic drone; jittered-up, Dead-adjacent jamming; and exquisitely paced, peaced, and creased repetition, Brooklyn’s Oneida entered a middle period of formless but revealing experimentation. 

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They returned, somewhat improbably, to less forbidding turf with 2022’s kinda-ironically named Success—an album that, with the help of guest players like Yo La Tengo’s James McNew, ventured into uncommonly sun-dazed regions. Expensive Air continues in this shorter, punchier vein, but with a darker undertow. If Success marked the euphoric comeback of a midcareer band reawakening in a post-COVID world, Expensive Air is a heavier but no less energetic look at the harshly evolved state of things. 

Not that Oneida have retreated into the wilds of obscure abstraction. “Here It Comes” might be the closest the mighty O have ever come to jangle-pop, if jangle were anchored by a massive bottom end, and tracks like the brawling “Stranger” and the pummeling “Spill” boast burly melodies (boosted by their best vocal production to date) that gleefully ransack various strains of ’70s rock, from Boston to Richard Hell. But there’s still plenty of unruly weirdness: The French-language “La Plage” has the demented drama of vintage Nomeansno, and the riffs and rhythms of pretty much every track come slathered in shifting layers of textured guitar wickedness and scurrilous synths, with very little negative space and few moments of respite. 

It’s a sound both cavernous and claustrophobic, suiting the dreadfully jubilant mood— opener “Reason to Hide” declares (after four minutes of haunted instrumental chugging) “I’m starting to feel like some kind of target!” But if Oneida are feeling hunted or hemmed in, they haven’t gone to ground: Expensive Air is, above all else, a barreling rush over the barricades and a frenzied, defiant dash toward whatever remains of freedom on the other side. 

Here it comes, indeed. GRADE: A-

Joyful Noise

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