Psych Night in Fishtown: Oneida & Kinski Turn Johnny Brenda's Into a Time Machine
There are Monday nights, and then there are Monday nights when two of American underground rock's most stubbornly weird lifers roll into Fishtown and dare you to keep track of the beat. Tonight, August 10, Johnny Brenda's hosts a double bill built for the head-nodders and the trance-seekers: Brooklyn's Oneida and Seattle's Kinski, with Philadelphia's own Emily Robb opening. Doors at 7, tickets $25.65, and if you leave without ringing ears, you did something wrong.
Start with Oneida, because everyone eventually does. Formed in Brooklyn in 1997, the trio of Kid Millions, Bobby Matador and Hanoi Jane spent the last quarter-century as the connective tissue of an entire scene — the "progenitors," as they've been called, of Brooklyn's experimental rock underground, a band that has played the Guggenheim and MoMA PS1 and also every sweatbox warehouse in between. Their calling card is repetition weaponized: motorik krautrock pulse, organ drone, and Kid Millions' drumming, which is less a rhythm than a force of nature. The 2002 landmark Each One Teach One opens with "Sheets of Easter," fourteen-plus minutes of a single chord and the mantra "you've got to look into the light" — a song that either converts you or sends you to the bar. Later they built the sprawling "Thank Your Parents" trilogy and, for years, ran the Ocropolis, a Williamsburg waterfront studio where they'd host 10-to-12-hour improv marathons before gentrification bulldozed it in 2012. Recent records like Romance and Success on Joyful Noise prove the engine still runs hot.
Kinski is the ideal travel partner. The Seattle outfit — longtime Sub Pop signees, currently marking their 20-year timeline — traffics in instrumental space-rock that swings from feather-light drift to full amplifier avalanche. Their 2007 Sub Pop album Down Below It's Chaos is the record to cram before doors: guitars that stalk quietly for ninety seconds and then detonate. Live, Kinski is a band that understands the long build is only worth it if the payoff levels the room, and they've been perfecting that math for two decades. This East Coast run pairs them with Oneida across nine cities — a genuine underground summit, not a package tour.
And then there's the hometown hook. Emily Robb is one of Philadelphia's most quietly essential guitarists, a solo player who bends noise, drone and psych into something eerily physical. Her records — How To Moonwalk, the bruised If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection — trade in feedback as feeling, and last year WHYY spotlighted her surreal instrumental Soundtrack to The Space Between Attack and Decay, a full sci-fi score built from six strings and nerve. Robb opening for Oneida and Kinski isn't a courtesy slot; it's a lineage snapping into place. The out-of-towners built the vocabulary; Robb speaks it fluently, in a Philly accent.
Why does a Monday-night psych show matter? Because this is the music that never got famous and never stopped mattering — the stuff that keeps the underground load-bearing while the algorithm chases whatever's shiny. Oneida turns 28 next year without a hit to their name and a discography most bands would kill for. Kinski just keeps showing up. Robb is building the same kind of career, one uncompromising record at a time, right here.
"You've got to look into the light," Oneida once chanted for fourteen straight minutes. Fishtown, the light's on Frankford Avenue tonight. Bring earplugs and an open head.
Sources: Johnny Brenda's Events; Oneida (Wikipedia)); Kinski – Down Below It's Chaos (Sub Pop); Emily Robb (WHYY)