Wheat

AMG Review of Wheat

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

The debut album by Boston's Wheat lacks the soft, psychedelic shimmer that producer Dave Fridmann gave to their follow-up, Hope and Adams; it's not quite lo-fi (although there's a strange humming noise continuing throughout the otherwise voice-and-acoustic guitar "Soft Polluted Blacks" that doesn't entirely sound like it was supposed to be there). These are skeletal but entirely satisfying nuggets of softly-sung, roughly-played, indie pop, triangulated somewhere between the Shins, the Pernice Brothers, and the Mountain Goats. A dry, offbeat sense of humor permeates songs like "Leslie West," and the geekily devoted "Girl Singer" ("you can really rock like a boy," it continues, less than promisingly), giving Medeiros an edge too often missing from this occasionally precious style. The band's amorphous lineup means that the songs range from nearly solo acoustic reveries to richer, full-band sounds and back, giving the album a diversity of sound that works in its favor. This album's promise would be fulfilled on Wheat's later albums, but on its own merits, Medeiros has much to offer.