Guitar-Rockers Wheat Reveal A Bit Of Themselves
When Wheat released their first album, Medeiros, in 1998, the band
assumed a Residents-like anonymity, without the big plastic eyeballs.
No names, no album credits, nothing in their press kit that would tell
you anything about the people who made the music.
With this week's release of their second album, Hope and Adams,
the Taunton, Mass., guitar rockers have come out of hiding, but not by
much. "What is expressed in the music is what we want to share with people,"
guitarist Ricky Brennan said. "Is it really so important where it comes
from?"
Brennan would say this: The members of the band — singer/guitarist
Scott Levesque, drummer Brendan Harney, bass player Kevin Camara and
Brennan — are mostly in their late 20s, two of them went to art
school and they all have "pretty serious" day jobs.
"We're all basically your average suburban boys who come from the same
places that most of us do," Brennan said. "The hope is that other people
can identify with the music for those reasons."
While Medeiros got Wheat pegged as a lo-fi, downer band, Hope
and Adams is more melodic and upbeat. Though similarities to lo-fi
avatars Pavement and Sebadoh abound, there's no hipster irony or moping
self-pity. The lyrics are often metaphorical, with such lines as "Your
love is a parking lot" from "San Diego" (RealAudio
excerpt). Brennan said the message of the music is in the sound
itself.
"We always joke around that we're more about concept than execution," he
said. "We're not great players as far as chops go, but we spend so much
time on the aesthetics. We want something that's beautiful, that's
colorful, where there's more implied than just spelling it out."
The album was co-produced by Mercury Rev multi-instrumentalist Dave
Fridmann, who also produced the Flaming Lips' recent The Soft Bulletin.
Fridmann said Wheat's songwriting drew him to the band.
"The songs really get into your head and make you think, like a smell
from childhood that overtakes you when you least expect it," Fridmann
said.
Wheat recorded the album in two weeks in January at Fridmann's Tarbox
Road Studios in Cassadaga, N.Y., with Flaming Lips bassist Michael Ivins
as assistant engineer. Brennan said Fridmann and Ivins helped him and
his bandmates realize the sounds they heard in their heads.
"If we said we wanted the bass to sound like an elephant crawling out of
the mud, they could do that," he said.
The songs on Hope and Adams are filled with musical details, such
as the clicking percussion and jangling bell that run through the album's
third track, "Don't I Hold You" (RealAudio
excerpt). Brennan thanked R&B superstar Janet Jackson for that
touch.
"When you're recording, you listen to a lot of other music to get a
reference point," he said. Fridmann threw on Jackson's Velvet Rope
so the band could hear how high, percussive noises filled out that album's
bass-heavy mix.
"It widens and expands the sound, and it drives the song," Brennan said,
though he also said too much of that kind of accompaniment can ruin a
good thing. "You've got to be really tasteful. It's the [late painter]
Bob Ross 'this little tree needs a friend' kind of thing."
Hope and Adams has more hooks than its predecessor, but its moody,
quirky vibe will probably keep it from mainstream radio airplay, though
it quotes Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" and Tom
Petty's "Free Fallin'."
"We're an indie band, no doubt, but we'd like to get away from that snooty,
indie-rock snob [attitude]," Brennan said.
Wheat, whose albums have been released by Chicago indie label Sugar Free
Records, are just trying to make the kind of music they'd like to listen
to, Brennan said.
"I just saw Tom Petty play, and those guys are in their 40s and 50s, and
that stuff rocks more than any of that Limp Bizkit stuff," he said. "The
thing that was beautiful about it was that there were people of all age
groups, because there's that universal thing where everybody attaches to
a good song."