There are still artists out there who are causing music to buckle and strain at the seams, who are finding new and inventive ways to turn familiar ideas inside out and bend some fresh life out of the archaic “rock” format. It can take patience and understanding—two qualities currently in perilously scarce supply—but anyone who is in this for the long haul is bound to come around to Oneida eventually. Most people are still trying to get their heads around Rated O, the band’s triple album opus from last year, but here we turn to a similarly ambitious double record they delivered for the Version City label in 2002.
Each One Teach One is a dense, multifaceted work, with two entire songs taking up one side each of the vinyl release, including the notorious ‘Sheets of Easter’, a song based around single-word repeating mantras that acts as a kind of litmus test as to whether you can get on board with Oneida’s gloriously warped take on familiar rock constructs. But you don’t need me to tell you about it. Here, each band member talks individually about the experience of bringing this singular work into the world, along with a few words from just about everybody involved with the project.....
