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This isn't right. At Wheat's only UK show to promote their new album, Kilburn's Luminaire is only half full; in fact there's so much space that people at the front of the crowd are sat down. How does a band this good manage to remain so stubbornly cultish?
Wheat's ten-year-long failure to engage large sections of the music-buying public will always be a mystery, but there are some clues. Their idiosyncratic output may be adored by some, but it turns off people who want a quick fix; secondly, they're not interested in fame anyway; and finally, they've managed to become embroiled in annoying record company shenanigans.
But when you hear the band launch into the songs from their fourth LP, Every Day I Say A Prayer For Kathy And Make A One Inch Square, you remember just what a spine-tingling proposition they are. Opening single _‘Closeness’ is an alt-pop gem, with swirling layers of rhythm and harmony; ‘Little White Dove’ is a heartbreakingly beautiful slice of Americana chopped up with keyboards and bristling vocals; and so it goes on.
Anyone who's ever expressed an interest in the work of REM, Wilco or Death Cab For Cutie would find something to love in what Wheat do. Which makes it all the more insane that so few people have given this Boston, Massachusetts band a try.
In their ten years together Wheat have produced some truly gorgeous - though often lo-fi - songs, and the fragile heart of the piece is singer/songwriter Scott Levesque. His voice sounds like it's going to break on classic 1999 heartbreaker ‘Don't I Hold You’. This is soulful, sparse, emotional music that really means something. Tellingly, Wheat's short-lived dalliance with major label indie-pop (their 2002 Sony album Per Second Per Second Per Second, Every Second) is excised from memory tonight.
They extend a couple of songs, like very old offering ‘Death Car’, into epic ten-minute jams with a cappella singing and driving, primal rhythms tagged on the end as if to prove that their mesmerising musical capacities could simply keep on going and going and going. With the amount of passion they possess it would be absurd to expect anything less.
Wheat
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..play one song, 'Breathe', from 'Per second, per second..', an album as grievously overlooked as the band themselves. Emotionally cryptic indie-rock magic, basically. Saw them again at Latitude a couple of days later...more thoughts [gratuitous plug] over at
www.reallyrather.blogspot.com
I'll get me coat!
You're right about PSPSPS...ES, I think it is a great album as well. The band don't though. We were discussing the fact that, apparently, there is a completely different version of it kicking around with different mixes of all the songs. The upbeat version of Don't I Hold You on PSPSPS...ES is fantatstic in it's own way too, don't you think?
quoi?
they didn't play Death Car!
and as correctly stated, they did play Breathe. Love that song. That whole album is great, can't believe they shun it.
Is Closeness the first single? I was sure it was Move=move. Closeness is the worst song on the album.
'Per second..' is..
.. cracking stuff pretty much all the way through (save, maybe, the Chet Baker-y horn coda on This Rough Magic,,hmmm). And all the original versions of the songs from that album are readily available from this ace fan site:
http://www.thiswheat.com/Per-Second-Nude-Versions.shtml
It's all good...
amen
The Nude versions are really interesting! Love this band.
PSPSPS...ES is so sunny and shiny and awesome. I don't like World United Already but the rest of it is great.
One tip for y'all - don't deal with Empyrean Records, their US label. I ordered a T shirt/Poster/EP (That's exactly what I wanted) set from them in November and despite numerous emails and them claiming to send it out several times, it never arrived. I ended up contacting the band themselves who sent me a copy of the album and the EP, bless em. But yeah, i was accused of receiving stuff and flogging it on ebay! the horror.
What do y'all think of the new record?
I didn't go to this gig
as I chose to see Loney Dear/ Silent League instead that night, but I did get to see them at Latitude Festival that weekend. The crowd there was also very low in numbers, but they were very good.
I was personally pleased that they didn't play any Per Second... songs in their set, as that album was a letdown for me. Hope & Adams is lovely, and their new one is quite cool also, so a set consisting of songs from both of them was great.
In Photos: Public Image Limited @ Liverpool Academy
In Photos: Redfest @ Robins Cook Farm, Surrey
In Photos: School of Seven Bells @ The Scala, London
In Photos: Adam Green @ Liverpool Academy
In Photos: Faithless @ The Roundhouse, London
In Photos: Latitude Festival 2010 @ Henham Park, Suffolk
Spotifriday #55 This Week on DiS as a playlist
Spotifriday #54 - This Week On DiS as a playlist
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