Originally Posted by Pet_Sounds Looking forward to reading this!

Originally Posted by Frownland I like what I see so far (hadn't heard that Snowman album, excellent stuff). I'll be keeping an eye on this journal.

Originally Posted by Trollheart Holy crap! You're fourteen? You write like a professional! Such insight and great usage of the language, and I don't see any spelling mistakes (not that I'm implying those younger than me ---- everyone's younger than me! --- have automatically bad spelling, but you know, texting and Facebook etc has not exactly made this the golden age of spelling or grammar, so you're carrying the standard very well) What an incredible start, and such an honest intro too. Be watching this; should be one of the journals of the year maybe. Very well done, and welcome!

Originally Posted by Briks Hey, you don't need to be old or anything to be a good writer! Just look at Pet_Sounds and... *ahem* me.

Oneida: Rated O (2009): This is an ambitious triple album from Oneida, a band whom I vaguely feel like I enjoy despite not being able to name any songs of theirs. I don't know that I've ever listened to a full album of theirs before. Anyway, we get some glitchy, hypnotic electronic grooves on what was released as the first LP (tracks 1-5), with "Story of O" taking a more guitar-based approach and "The Human Factor" building up from just a drum kit to the most experimental track yet. It's sort of jarring to hear these two, especially the latter, ramp up the intensity with more abrasive sounds and (in the case of "The Human Factor") screamed vocals.

The second disk pushes them into straighter Krauty psych-rock territory, but luckily, they're a good band and can handle it. At times (like "The Life You Preferred") they sound sort of like a less dancy Les Savy Fav, which is to say that there are some really great angular guitars going on but the focus is on the rhythm (given that I described them as "Krautrocky", what did you expect?), which anchors the whole thing. The third LP is quieter but using more rock instrumentation, sort of splitting the difference between the two preceding it. It only has three songs, two of which are over ten minutes. This is the quieter trippy side, but it does some unpredictable cool stuff - gotta love the sitar on "O", which they manage to sell as not just a gimmick.

I've heard that some criticize this album for being too long, but I think that misses the point. It's a demanding listen, sure, but it's a really solid, consistent album (although the second disk wears a little during "Saturday" and "It Was a Wall"), and it's interesting to hear how the band make what are essentially three distinct albums fit together naturally. It's not really a "rock" album - the instrumentation is there, and some songs even have verse-chorus-verse structures and so on, but I'm not going to put this on to sing along to. If I listen, I'm going to do it in one of two ways - to pay my undivided attention to, or to have on in the background, especially if the part of the album I'm listening to is the first three tracks, with their subtly morphing soundscapes. This album lets you choose whether you want it to be an ambient album or an intensely complicated hands-on listening experience, and I think that's really cool. But, although I can see myself loving a couple of these songs, and I like most of them, the middle third in particular is inconsistent despite having a couple of the most immediately appealing songs on the entire thing, and a lot of the album is only pretty good, so I'll go with 7.5. For whatever it's worth, if I were rating each of the thirds individually, I'd say 7.5/6.5/7, and it gets the extra .5 for how unexpectedly cohesive it is.