Wheat's White Ink Black Ink

Track List:

1. "H.O.T.T." - 2:27

2. "Changes Is" - 3:53

3. "My Warning Song (Everything Is Gonna Be Alright)" - 3:08

4. "El Sincero" - 2:56

5. "Living 2 Die vs. Dying 2 Live" - 3:08

6. "If Everything Falls Together" - 2:50

7. "Music is Drugs" - 4:42

8. "Coke and Tangqueray" - 0:32

9. "Mountains" - 3:42

10. "I Want Less" - 4:03

11. "Baby in My Way" - 2:07

The one time I was asked what Wheat sounds like, my reply was “kinda like Bread, but more raw,” which is an admittedly pun-based response, but it sort of makes sense if you think about it. Wheat is a band that religiously avoids structure and consequently evades being pigeonholed. The only consistent factor through five long players is inconsistency, and this can be good and bad news. Wheat prefers to exist just outside the spectrum of typical pop. They’re raw in the sense that all the pop ingredients are there, but musically, it’s an ongoing experiment with the recipe. You’ve got your hooks, your sparkling guitar riffs, insidious melodies and equally infectious chorus-heavy vocals – but it never comes together in the same way. So maybe not Bread, but think Beta Band or Menomena with the proclivity for avoiding normalcy like the Animal Collectives or Grizzly Bears of the world. They probably sound like what Wilco sounded like to Wilco in their druggier early-aught years. Confused? Good, that means you’re ready for some Wheat.

“Half of the time, it’s total darkness; half of the time, I see the light and it shines.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, Levesque. Track one hits the nail on the head. Whether you’re a Per Second kinda fan, or more of a Hope & Adams enthusiast, about half of Wheat’s material probably strikes something of a discord. There’s a palpable hyper-consciousness of the diverging styles between the atmospheric and the more grounded melancholy riff-rock. For me, 2007’s Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Make a One Inch Square struck the perfect balance between the two. They characteristically dodge predictability, and still somehow manage to make some of the catchiest songs of the year. Musically, Kathy builds out, not up. There’s no pay-off, no (seemingly) inevitable capitulation to the friendly confines of the radio-pop ditty. Instead, there are lyrical rounds, aimless crescendos, compounding (yet fleeting) rhythms, all encasing the inspiringly restrained lyrics. What Wheat lacks in accessibility, they make up for in provocative ingenuity.

So if you’re like me, a Kathy fan, White Ink Black Ink is (almost) exactly the album you’re probably hoping for. The sprawling songscapes are reined in a bit, for the most part, so the Per Second die-hards should be pleased as well. In fact, “Living 2 Die vs. Dying to Live” and “Music is Drugs” are almost, dare I say, radio-friendly? Wheat always has the ability to keep us guessing, but even I’m a little surprised to say that the biggest draw back is the repetition. There’s less of the organic sensibility that made Kathy so successful, and made Levesque’s repetitive tendencies work so well. Where Kathy tends to expand and contract, White Ink Black Ink leans more in favor of guileless expansion. “Baby in My Way” and “My Warning Song (Everything is Gonna Be Alright)” are clear cut examples of the contraction deficit. Tracks like “I Had Angels Watching Over Me” and “Little White Dove” from Kathy push the atmospheric mysticism to near breaking points, but cycle back through musically sparse vocal rounds with cunning finesse. So, in a sense it’s more of a coherent array of songs, but at the same time, it lacks that invisible hand that kept Kathy so enticingly bewildering.

In the end, if you’re waiting for some sort of return to form, this is not that. Wheat is in a state of constant conceptual evolution or flux. If there is any discernable form, then truly, Wheat has never departed. They will never be the band you rave about, but they are the band you will return to again and again when predictability is getting you down.