Oneida - 'Secret Wars' (Rough Trade) Released 26/01/04

Oneida sound like Velvet Underground. They use drone and that Sister Ray organ and paint a picture of the post-punk underground that was brought up in Lou Reed’s shadow. This is art-drone. But it’s so beautifully made that its narrowness is nothing but an optical illusion. If this is just an album of noise and artsy posturings – no matter how genuine – it seems to show its own limits just to break free. And it breaks free in a funny way, pretending it never left at all and it’s you that's changed.

You see, the songs are deceptive. Try and examine them and it all sounds like lesser bands: good but not great. But take even the slightest step back and it rings with so much veracity it’s untrue. They might have all the hallmarks of post-Sonic Youth extrapolations but blur your vision slightly and this becomes geographic in scale. So, ‘The Last Act, Every Time’ will break your heart like a drunken ‘Careless Whispers’. ‘The Winter Shaker’ will make you pretend that Chinese water torture is more romantic when frozen. It’s one of those few great albums that can simultaneously be everything you hope it will and everything you hope it won’t. It might be the Grand Canyon but it would rather you mistook it for a crack in the ceiling.

Or the sixth album by a bunch of pretentious NYC hipsters.