Oneida
Rated O

Nowadays, old ladies with strange teeth no longer ask you to paint their fences. Unfortunately, no one reads William Faulkner's stories anymore. Nowadays, they ask you to paint them a nice wall and the scenery goes to hell. Before, you painted while looking at a meadow or, I don't know, a nice stream or a peasant girl bent over ninety, busy picking some kind of vegetable... Today, it's a mix of putty, cement, and bricks. Then maybe, by chance, you have always suffered from vertigo, and so, just by chance, they tell you their little dog is lively, sticks its head out of the balcony, and now, therefore, it's your turn to stick your head out of the balcony. To sew an ugly fence that if only through it the world could be seen - like the old lady's dog with the strange teeth will be in a few days - you would have to figure out a way to trick it just to throw yourself down. Well, with my nice heavy skull dangling from the fourth floor, I had an epiphany... not just a solar one, but let's start from the end.
 
As we were saying: 5, no bullshit. 5 not in the sense of "great album, a must-listen," but 5 in the sense of "I couldn't care less about perfection, but this album, damn them, is perfect." You know what is meant by the term "psychedelia", those things, not necessarily odorless and tasteless, that you put in the stereo or spin around, then close your eyes and start listening from the living room - or from the balcony of the lady with the strange teeth - and end up, in ecstasy, lost who knows where, but surely in a faraway and better place? Well, this is psychedelia and Rated O - the second chapter of the "Thank Your Parents" trilogy begun last year with Preteen Weaponry -, a triple album lasting two hours, released on July 13 from the warehouses of the enlightened/crazy folks at Jagjaguwar, is its primer. Everything that can be done with psychedelia is found inside.
 
The first of the three discs mixes tacky electronics with acid soured by time, so much so that at times it will seem like you're listening to one of those dance-hall-degenerate-on-the-beach tracks, but done well, with all the malice and arrogance required, as if to say: let's turn crap into gold and let's do it now. Then if you hear some extremely intensified kraut tribalism, don't be impressed: you haven't started a bad trip. It's the Oneida who start it for you.
 
The second, on the other hand, if you own a convertible Mustang, maybe red like the villain's in Cape Fear, it's perfect. Stoner quite stoned, but not to the point of slowing down to the extreme. The guitars, you should know, dive onto the patterns clinging beautifully... And the synth? The synth will fry what little you have left to fry. If then you feel like jumping with "The Life You Preferred" because the major riff, which splits counter-time, revives you, everything's okay. If then you want to dance, because the heat doesn't sedate you and everything else along with it, there's still "It Was a Wall".
 
The third is a freak jam that pulls out of the closet a sitar that is not only way overdue but also beautiful, along with a lot of effects that seem to come from space or the Hawkwind's rehearsal space. If you're really tired, the third is preferable. You lie down and it moves.
 
And then people complain that nothing happens, that nothing ever comes out, that rock is dead, that cinema is dead too, and that after another five minutes, the era of love is also over, collapsed under the weight of do it yourself... And all the other usual statements. But if faced with the classic question - "What’s Up, Jackas?" - don't answer. Let Oneida answer. Or the old lady with the strange teeth.