Kid Millions: I feel like when I listen back to The Wedding... I'm not saying we could accomplish something more -- we couldn't accomplish something more. I listen back to The Wedding and think, that's the best we could do.

Fat Bobby: I'm happier with The Wedding as it is than I would be if we'd been really faithful to that.

Kid Millions: Yeah. I'm not saying that we were trying to be the Left Banke. It's just that I hear all our limits, the kind of walls we bumped up against, which I think is pretty cool...

Fat Bobby: Yeah, that is cool.

Kid Millions: As we took it as far as we could take this shit.

Fat Bobby: That was like four years ago. That driving explanation about what The Wedding was going to be. It really did sort of slowly evolve over time. The other things and other avenues... Originally when we sat down to do it, I sat down and wrote a bunch of songs and recorded demos of them, and of those songs -- there were five of them -- and of those songs, "Charlemagne" on the album is the only one that's from that original songwriting session.

Kid Millions: Those songs, in the other ones, there's actually a lot more noticeable Left Banke influence.

Fat Bobby: Yeah, totally, and hopefully we'll finish them at some point.

Kid Millions: They're great songs.

Fat Bobby: But I can hear those and think, "Oh yeah, Left Banke, of course." And the idea was... we were trying to track down a harpsichord to record them and...

Kid Millions: We did?

Fat Bobby: And then it was like, oh, yeah, whatever. That's what happened to the harpsichord.

Splendid: The Left Banke, weren't they also known for their string arrangements?

Fat Bobby: Yeah, string and woodwind. That's why, that's very much why we decided we were going to have lots of cool string arrangements on the record.

Splendid: Yeah, now, usually when a rock band starts bringing in a string quartet, it's sort of the beginning of the end.

Fat Bobby: Or the end of the end, if you're talking about Metalllica.

Splendid: Yeah, well, I was thinking more of The Moody Blues.

Kid Millions: Oh god.

Splendid: But I think you avoided that sort of excess pretty well. How'd you stop from going off the deep end?

Fat Bobby: Well, most bands use strings to kind of sweeten and embellish stuff. That was never really on our radar. "Oh, here's this pretty song, and let's just sweeten it up a little." There's a little bit of that. "August Morning Haze", which is the last song on the record, has a little bit of that. That song was always meant to be a super-mainstream, saccharine kind of thing.

Kid Millions: Yeah, we used to call it "grunge pop".

Fat Bobby: That was before some of the other instruments got added.

Kid Millions: Either that or "Under the Bridge".

Fat Bobby: Yeah, "Under the Bridge".

We have suddenly all got the giggles.

Fat Bobby: For the record, we like this music.

Kid Millions: Yeah, yeah, yeah...I love that song...a lot.

Fat Bobby: I don't want you to think that we make this music as a joke. We just know that it's funny. We try to do things and we totally stumble over ourselves and that's what's funny.

Splendid: But I think that's what's so cool about you guys, that you try all this stuff.

Fat Bobby: Yeah, well, you've got to try. If you don't take yourself too seriously, then whatever you come up with you can shape and refine into something cool. Or at least we think so.

Splendid: The first thing you notice is that the string sound is there and that's kind of an odd thing, but after a while, the strings are doing a lot of the same things that you guys would do with more traditional rock instruments. It was the same music, but it was just in different colors.

Kid Millions: The guy who did the arrangements knows all our records. He's a friend of mine from age five. He's heard them all.

Fat Bobby: He's heard 25 years of Oneida.

Kid Millions: I really think he did right by the songs.

Fat Bobby: He did an amazing job. We had a meeting with him. We gave him, in some cases, rough mixes of the actual songs. I don't know if there was anything we gave him that was an out-and-out demo. We had one or two meetings to talk about ideas and then he just went and did all kinds of crazy, fantastic stuff. And even in one case, was it "Charlemagne"? We went into the studio and we weren't all that excited with the arrangement he had done. So he was like, "All right, when we come back tomorrow, I'll have written a completely different arrangement." And it kicked ass. Brian's work was the intersection of professionalism and inspiration that, I think, we would love to achieve... if we had the professionalism.

Kid Millions: He kind of made the record what it is. Without it, it wouldn't have been...

Fat Bobby: It would have been something different.

Kid Millions: Right.

Fat Bobby: But it would have been kind of like what you're saying, Jenny, kind of lame strange, which would have been disastrous.

Splendid: You don't know that.

Kid Millions: Cool. See, that's positive.

Fat Bobby: That's why we don't lie to Jenny.

Splendid: Well, I would really like a picture of the music box.

Fat Bobby: I'll draw you one and scan it and email it to you.

Splendid: Would you really? That would be so great.

Fat Bobby: I did just do an interview with someone who really wanted me to describe it physically in every way possible.

Splendid: Even after you'd explained that it was a figment of your imagination?

Fat Bobby: I didn't explain it. She wasn't asking the right kinds of questions to get the truth.

Splendid: Wow... The other thing I was noticing was that the vocals were mixed louder than before. Isn't that true?

Fat Bobby: We kind of sang differently, too. But yeah.

Splendid: Because I remember listening to "Caesar's Column" and I was trying to figure out if it was about those columns they have in Rome, you know? With the triumphal procession going up and around all these carvings and stuff?

Fat Bobby: Yeah.

Splendid: And I couldn't make out the words, so finally, I just decided, screw it, that's what it's about even if it's not. But in this case, it wouldn't be possible to do that, because you can hear most of the words.

Kid Millions: Right.

Fat Bobby: It was definitely going to happen.

Kid Millions: We wanted the words to be understood.

Fat Bobby: That was important this time.

Splendid: Why was it important this time and not before?

Fat Bobby: It's always been kind of important. I've always felt that our lyrics were fucking great, but it's just the way our voices and the words sat in the music, they were kind of submerged, with just phrases jumping out. Kid and I wrote most of the lyrics on this record. For me, at least, there's a lot more directness or emotional heft or something. Even when they're really abstract songs, the meaning of the lyrics and what we're saying... it was important that it be understood to help carry the song. At least to me.

Kid Millions: That's true.

Splendid: And the other thing that I was wondering, they seem more like songs and less like -- I don't know what they were before, but they weren't traditional songs with verses and choruses.

Fat Bobby: One of them on this record has a chorus. That's the last one. That's probably not the first song we ever wrote with a chorus.

Kid Millions: There's choruses on others, aren't there? Wait a minute....

Fat Bobby: We're probably a little more instinctual and less calculating about it. I don't know if we were trying to make it more song-like, but it's definitely something that would follow out of the original inspiration of what we were trying to do.

Kid Millions: In "Spirits", I was trying to make it songlike.

Splendid: I really like "Spirits". I'm sort of dividing the songs into two groups...

Kid Millions: The ones you like and the ones you don't?

Splendid: No, I actually like all of them, but they seem to fall into several camps. "Run Through My Hair" is sort of lighter in weight and texture and it's more precise. It reminds me a lot of "The Last Act Every Time".

Kid Millions: Yeah, it does.

Splendid: Were they written at the same time?

Fat Bobby: No, they weren't written at the same time, but it was a really similar approach to the writing for both of those. Like a really self-contained thing with these weird string instruments that I have.

Splendid: And then there are others that are heavier and remind me more of some of your long psychedelic songs. "Spirits" kind of bridges the gap between the two.

Fat Bobby: "Spirits" is very much Kid just laying it down. Totally. We walked in -- me and Jane were basically presented with "Here's this song. What do you think?" And we were like, "It's fucking sweet. Great. Throw it on the album. Side one."

Splendid: Is that how it usually happens or do you work together on songs more.

Fat Bobby: It happens a million different ways.

Kid Millions: It's just one of the things that happens.

Fat Bobby: You know, we have our own studio space, so a lot of songs, we build just by getting together and playing and working stuff out of improv. Somebody might have just the vaguest sketchiest idea and then we'd all sit down and try to play around it, shape it into something. But then other times, somebody will be like, okay, I've got this idea. I'm going to go and work it up into a song. Which sometimes means to just develop it and say, "Hey guys, I wrote this. Help me finish it." But other times, it means, "Oh, look, I've recorded this song." We like to keep it as open as possible to any way of making stuff. It allows us a lot more flexibility and freedom. And it's cool. People will get in a rhythm or have this kind of focus where they'll blow through a bunch of songs, and you'll be, like, "Wow, I just did four or five songs in the past month." And it's not like all of those are going to go on an album. But it's cool, because you'll look back and six months later, you say, "God, I couldn't make music like that now." It's just like you're seized by some inspiration and if you're the only person around, it's great to have the means to make it happen.

Splendid: Where's the studio?

Kid Millions: Williamsburg.

Fat Bobby: Yeah, it's on the waterfront in Williamsburg on the river in this old warehouse where we build a studio in the loading dock. It's the location of the spurious music box. The place is real.

Splendid: Do you own it or rent it?

Fat Bobby: We rent it from some friends who've got a floor of this warehouse and this is the loading dock for that floor. We started five yeara ago. We built, with the help of our friends, we built this self-contained room inside the loading dock with a big high ceiling. We hung lots of fur on the walls. It's not the usual space.

Splendid: It sounds like that's one of the main problems with being a band in New York City, that it's hard to practice and record.

Fat Bobby: Finding space to play and the general cost of living are the two ridiculous things about being a band in New York.

Kid Millions: And the indifference.

Fat Bobby: Yeah... Well, I think that's a double-edged thing. You can do whatever you want in New York, and somebody's likely interested in it. Whereas if you do that in wherever you live in New Hampshire, odds are pretty good that nobody wants you to be doing that at all.

Splendid: I would make sure that nobody in New Hampshire knew about it. (Laughter)

Splendid: So, tell me about "Did I Die" -- whose song is that?

Fat Bobby: Kid.

Kid Millions: Lyrically it's mine. I wrote it.

Fat Bobby: That's Kid talking.

Kid Millions: What do you want to know about it?

Splendid: Well, you guys did a radio show on WFMU a few years ago, and it was interesting, because you each did about half an hour. You had really different stuff. Maybe I shouldn't take it literally, as this is the stuff you like and these are your influences, but it seemed like three really different people coming together with different influences.

Kid Millions: It definitely happens. It's definitely part of it.

Fat Bobby: If you were going to link "Did I Die" with that, it would probably be Jane.

Splendid: That's what I was thinking, because he was playing Judas Priest and stuff like that.

Fat Bobby: Yeah.

Splendid: He's the metal guy?

Fat Bobby: Jane definitely comes out of the... what we like to call the metal tradition. We all listen to all kinds of shit, but we each bring our own histories to the band. We all love all kinds of stuff, but we definitely have our own approaches.

Splendid: Does that ever create tension or difficulty?

Fat Bobby: No... no. Only when we mock each other, like for Jane's awkward ska phase. (More laughter)

Kid Millions: Print that, will you?

Splendid: It's all going in.

Fat Bobby: It's all good and really useful. It's awesome to have somebody who can really shred metal guitar, because that's what he grew up listening to and that's what he did when he was locked alone in his room. And I was all into like... whatever... gay alternative pop, Alphaville, New Order, that kind of stuff. We all listened to lots of stuff growing up. It's pretty much only been positive, that we come from different... let's use the word "heritages."

Splendid: How did you guys all meet each other and start?

Fat Bobby: Kid and I went to high school together.

Kid Millions: In New Hampshire.

Splendid: No kidding.

Fat Bobby: We've been playing together in bands since we were 16.

Kid Millions: Oh yeah... (he starts to laugh)

Fat Bobby: I believe it was called The Four Winds.

(They are both cracking up, which, obviously, makes me want to know all about The Four Winds.)

Splendid: Are there pictures?

Fat Bobby: Yeah. So we've known each other forever. Then Kid and Jane met in college.

Splendid: How'd you end up in New York?

Fat Bobby: We were going to different colleges. Me and Kid and we decided we should go move somewhere together to play music and ... New York was just like...

Kid Millions: You were already there.

Fat Bobby: It was Al, that's what it was. It was me and Al, this guy that we knew. He was from New York originally, and he was like, oh, we should find a place in Brooklyn and go move there and get a big space and make a bunch of noise. And I was like, okay, that sounds good.

Splendid: You pretty much have to go to New York at some point in your life.

Fat Bobby: Yeah, you know, I'm really glad that we did. It's pretty cool.

Kid Millions: Definitely. It was a good time. A good time to be here.

Fat Bobby: It's so hard to live in New York when you have no money. But at the same time, it's so good to be there when you're young and have energy. I'm sure that if we were young and intelligently employed, it would have been paradise. We probably wouldn't have gotten much music in.

Kid Millions: Exactly. It wouldn't have been better at all.

Splendid: I worked for Drexel Burnham Lambert when I lived there, and it was one of those intelligent jobs, but it was horrible. I had no life at all.

Kid Millions: I wonder if I ever ended up there. We both worked on Wall Street.

Fat Bobby: I was never there. I was at JP Morgan.

Splendid: You can't have a job in New York where you can leave. You have to be there all the time. It's just too much.

Fat Bobby: I find that living in New York and being in a band in New York and making music was actually really healthy for me as an individual -- I had to work all the time just to stay alive and pay the rent, because it's so fucking expensive. I think for some people, that would just exhaust them and make it harder to make music, but I really needed something that would teach me discipline. Otherwise I wouldn't have had the energy to be really directed and focused on making music. The fact that I had to work every day -- it was just, "Okay, great, my life is going to be mayhem all the time." I don't know how it ended up prompting me to be more productive outside of work, the fact that all hours of my life would be spoken for at all times.

Splendid: Yeah, I don't know how people do it. I didn't get any real writing done while I was in New York at all.

Fat Bobby: I can see how that would work. You're like, fuck it, I want to take a shower.

Splendid: But it was fun. I was drunk more. It was good. (Pause) So, you guys just got back from Europe?

Fat Bobby: Yeah, Sunday night.

Splendid: How was that?

Kid Millions: Cool.

Fat Bobby: Great.

Splendid: Were you out with one specific band, or just whoever was there?

Fat Bobby: Just us. We crossed paths occasionally with other bands. But it was all about the "O", you know?

Splendid: I missed the EP you had on Ace Fu.

Fat Bobby: You should get that. I think you'd like it.

Splendid: I was in the middle of downloading it at one point, you know, from iTunes. I don't have broadband and it was just taking too long, so I figured I'd buy it eventually and I never did.

Fat Bobby: They should send it to you for free.

Kid Millions: Yeah. Bobby, get Eric to send her a copy.

Fat Bobby: Send me your address and I'll forward it to Eric and get him to send you a copy.

Splendid: That'd be great. Was that also trending in the direction of this album?

Fat Bobby: It was much more recent stuff, but I think when you hear it, you can hear connections. It's a little more scattered, but I'd say it's related. Certainly the music is related. Especially as what I think of as the first side, those three songs are really akin to "Spirits", at least in my mind. And then there's another weird-ass acoustic thing. I don't know. You should hear it.

Kid Millions: To me, it's different from all other Oneida, but it's still very much of a piece. It's stuff we hadn't really done before.

Splendid: Isn't there a song called "Hakuna Matata" on there?

Fat Bobby: There is...

Splendid: But it's not a cover.

Fat Bobby: That's a classic.

Kid Millions: I liked the All-Music Guide review. The guy basically said, "These guys just fucked over Ace Fu. They basically delivered a piece of crap to their doorstep."

Fat Bobby: And that was so not our intention.

Kid Millions: We were just like... whoa!

Fat Bobby: I like it when people try to discern your intent, because I feel like our motives are usually pretty perverse. It would take a real super-genius empath to figure it out.

Splendid: None of those people write about music.

Fat Bobby: They don't write about Oneida. They're too fucking scared. Print it. Print that.

Kid Millions: They're too busy writing about Coldplay.

Splendid: I don't think I've ever heard a Coldplay song. (I've done some research on this since the interview and it turns out that, as I suspected, Coldplay is not my thing.)

Fat Bobby: There's a really good one called "Yellow". Their first hit is awesome.

Kid Millions: You like "Yellow"?

Fat Bobby: I totally like it.

Kid Millions: I don't like that one.

Fat Bobby: It's like a sensitive, teary-eyed boy ballad that's not really about anything.

Kid Millions: That's what all their older stuff is like. Lyrically, they don't really touch on anything. But... what was I going to say? That song always confused me because I thought it was some kind of Dave Matthews-like ballad that just kind of snuck through the cracks.

Fat Bobby: I don't really know what Dave Matthews sounds like.

Kid Millions: Just the voice sounded similar to me.

Fat Bobby: I thought the Dave Matthews Band were grungy sounding dudes.

Kid Millions: He's got a high voice.

Fat Bobby: Sweet, I'm glad we cleared that up... on your dime, Jenny.

Splendid: That's... cool. So what are you guys going to do next?

Fat Bobby: We're recording next weekend. We're in the middle of our next album which is going to be called Thank Your Parents. It's a triple album...

Splendid: (Not quite getting this) A tribute album?

Fat Bobby: No, triple. We pronounce the word tri (with a long i) ple, because people have a problem with it.

Splendid: All the cool people do it that way.

Fat Bobby: Yeah, yeah. We've got to get to work on that because we've got to get it done by the end of the year. We have a lot done. It's going to be all kinds of crazy shit. The last few remaining people who weren't alienated by The Wedding are going to be sooo fucking angry at Thank Your Parents.

Splendid: Good.

Fat Bobby: That's the way I feel. I think we will finally have come through the tunnel to the other side and anybody who's left after Thank Your Parents, they will understand Oneida. I don't know what that means, or what they'll be understanding, but...

Splendid: And then they'll die, right?

Kid Millions: Hopefully not.

Splendid: You guys are pretty productive. What do you have to say to these bands that do a record every three or four years?

Fat Bobby: Um, you know why they do it? It's because they're on tour all the time. Then when they write the songs, they're like, "Fuck, I don't have anything to write about." Or like, "Yeah, that riff sounds familiar." If you don't live, you can't make fucking music.

Kid Millions: The other thing is -- I don't think we are actually that productive. Relative to other bands, maybe.

Fat Bobby: If we didn't have day jobs and we got together day after day, we'd put out six records a year.

Kid Millions: Yeah. But... I don't know, I think a lot of people don't spend as much time on music as you think they do. I don't really know how other people operate.

Fat Bobby: For me, it's just totally acute right now, coming back from the tour, but a certain level of my mind is shut down after a very short time of being on tour. And I can't imagine, the kids that spend ten months a year on tour, how they could create things at a high level. I'm sure some people are wired for it. I've never heard a note of his music, but that Ryan Adams guy cranks out records. You've got to appreciate that.

Kid Millions: I don't know what he sounds like.

Fat Bobby: I think it's kind of country, Bruce Springsteen stuff.

Splendid: I think it varies from album to album. Like Beck, he's somebody different every time he does a record.

Fat Bobby: Well, that's cool. That's somebody who can do it, who can be on the road and put out music. It's sort of shameful that bands aren't putting out more records. The records aren't that good. We listened to so much music on this tour, because we had the crazy iPod action.

Kid Millions: I caught up on all these indie bands and man, they suck.

Fat Bobby: Even when they don't suck, they're not interesting. Like a band like... to name names, The Decemberists. I don't know how long they take between records, a year, two years, three years, I don't know...

(They've actually been producing slightly more than a record a year.)

To take that long and to come out with music that's that dull, it's unconscionable. Maybe it's not fair to be picking on them, but they're just the first one that popped into my head. They make me so mad at indie pop. The whole point of being independent is that you can do whatever you want. I don't see why you should have to be the same old shit... but there's no reason for me to get so riled up.

Splendid: Have you heard anything good lately?

Fat Bobby: There's tons of good music. Kid plays on this record, but the new Ex Models is killer.

Splendid: There's a new Ex Models?

Fat Bobby: Yeah, featuring Kid Millions on drums.

Kid Millions: It's called Chrome Panthers. It's not out in the states yet, actually. It's coming out in the fall.

Fat Bobby: Those are some dudes that do the right thing. They just make the music that they make. They just do a good job with it. Parts & Labor are a great band.

Splendid: Yeah, I saw them... when I saw you guys.

Fat Bobby: At Sin-E, that's right. Yeah, there's great bands out there. I'm not saying Oneida's the only good one.

Kid Millions: We just heard a lot of bands ...at least I heard a ton of bands that I only knew their names. On this trip, we had a couple of iPods that were filled with music...

Fat Bobby: But not by us.

Kid Millions: Like Bright Eyes... I heard Bright Eyes for the first time. Sufjan Stevens.

Fat Bobby: Q and Not U, that was the first time I heard them. There's lots of indie bands...

Kid Millions: The Faint.

Fat Bobby: You know, like the bands that (expletive deleted) writes about... that kind of music. Some of it's good. But it just seems like such a waste of energy.

Kid Millions: Nothing jumped out at me.

Fat Bobby: I'm trying to think if I heard anything that excited me. My taste is so fucked up. I can't tell anymore.

Kid Millions: I liked the Killers. I'd listen to that. Kelly... Whatever her name was.

Fat Bobby: The Kelly Clarkson, the Kelly Osbourne. Yeah, there's good pop music. Those people are doing it right. I think we're in a moment when there's really good pop music, but the commonly accepted rock music is a little on the dull side. But it's cool. Oneida's here... we'll soothe your fevered brow.