Album Review: Romance by Oneida

Excepting a collaboration with legendary post-minimalist composer Rhys Chatham, Romance is Oneida's first studio full-length since the building that hosted their Brooklyn recording studio, the Ocropolis, was demolished in 2011. Oneida were hardly inactive, however; they toured throughout America and Europe and released several limited live recordings and singles, in addition to their extracurricular projects such as People of the North and Man Forever. While the group's early-2010s albums (Absolute II and A List of the Burning Mountains) were bleak, challenging excursions that nearly jettisoned rock & roll influences altogether, Romance is significantly lighter and more listener-friendly, but still highly eclectic, daring, and unpredictable.

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Over the two decades the Brooklyn-based kosmische noise-crew has unleashed their experimental ephemera, it's hard to find two moments on an Oneida record that resemble one another. Their 12th album, Romance, explores new ground yet again, literally and metaphorically, as an examination of where one fits in the tumult of suddenly inhospitable environments. Across 11 tracks clocking in at 72 minutes, Romance offers a comprehensive yet concise survey of the best of Oneida's vast and varied catalog--transfixing ambient loops, expansive krautrock jams, and even straight-ahead rock, while taking less time than ever to get to the point.

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