New York art-rocker staples Oneida made a huge splash for me personally last year with their album The Wedding. It made number 11 on my best-of list and I tried to turn everyone I knew on to it as much as possible, considering it was their most accessible and listener friendly release to date. I even had one friend of mine thank me for introducing him to his favorite of all the new "it" bands of the moment. I hadn't the heart to tell the man that The Wedding made album number seven for these guys.

Another year goes by, and Oneida is right back with their eighth - Happy New Year. I thought that The Wedding was a clear signal that Oneida were finally coming out of their shells a bit to try and gain a bigger audience, but this album finds them running back to the unrelenting shadows of the more bizarre. The best tracks on Happy New Year seem to be channeling Syd Barrett (God bless his recent passing) era Pink Floyd and album opener "Distress" and "You Can Never Tell" are the most pallatable to the uninitiated. Unfortunately, there are moments on Happy New Year that don't lend themselves to any kind of accessibility. Easily the most inscrutable track on Happy New Year is the overly long "Up With People." Musically it sounds like the bass slappings of Primus of all things. I'm not quite sure that's what a band like Oneida were out to construct, but that's what they ended up with. Happy New Year most likely won't end up being remembered as one of their more essential releases, but there's always another new year and most likely a better Oneida album just around the corner.