Wheat Return After Pondering Future During Long Layoff

Throughout Wheat's career, they've always seemed to float around the periphery of things. Never quite part of any major movement nor completely ignored altogether, one of indie rock's most underrated bands of the last decade have managed to carve out a quiet career for themselves while some of their peers made noise by either finding some modicum of major label success or (more recently) hitting the O.C. jackpot. Or sometimes both (see: Death Cab For Cutie).

So when Wheat released their last album, Per Second... Per Second... Per Second... Every Second, via Sony in 2003, it seemed as if the band's relatively underground status might actually change. It didn't. After two critically revered albums on Chicago indie label Sugar Free, the jump to a major proved to be too drastic a change for a band who had always found success hovering around the fringes. And for all intents and purposes, save for a few appearances on movie soundtracks (including Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown), Wheat all but disappeared. Until now, of course.

In true Wheat fashion, the Rhode Island group have quietly completed a new LP (set for an early 2007 release) that will no doubt pleasantly surprise fans who assumed that they were finished.

"After doing the touring, et cetera for Per Second, we pretty much put Wheat down altogether," admits drummer Brendan Harney. "[Guitarist/vocalist] Scott [Levesque] and I felt that we wouldn't continue with Wheat any longer.

"It had gone a bit wayward for us and we felt unsure of wanting to move forward. Also, [guitarist/vocalist] Ricky [Brennan] left to work on his own projects. So Scott and I would just talk on the phone occasionally about concepts. Then, when the pull to work again felt stronger than the pull not to, we decided to jump back in. We needed a reason to do it, and the music we wanted to hear wasn't there, so we had to make it. To tell you the truth, the band had no big expectations for Per Second. From the get-go, we felt out of place in the major label world and the relationships that we had with the people who inhabit that world. So, given that, we felt like we'd just ride it out and kinda see where it goes. And as it went on, we were more hoping for the end so we could move on."

Per Second's polished sound was much more produced than Wheat's two previous lo-fi masterpieces, Medeiros and Hope And Adams, the latter of which should be on everyone's top 10 list of indie albums of the '90s. If Per Second had been Wheat's debut album, indie pop fans would have wet themselves. Instead, it definitely proved that the major label world just wasn't for Wheat.

"We never intended Per Second to be a swan song, but it looked like it could be that at one point," continues Harney. "Not only did we end up putting it on hold, but we gave it up altogether.T he band became things Scott and I never wanted it to be, and we also felt like we were losing control over our own image and output. So we thought it was time for a 180-degree turn at that point. One of the reasons we started to work again, besides the general desire to create again, was because we didn't want Per Second to be the last word. It didn't flesh out our story the way we wanted, and it wouldn't leave the memory the way we wanted.

"We really felt like we had a story to tell — the things in our lives, the loss of love, the pull of desire. We felt like we could channel this into music. Our expectations were minimal: try and put down in recorded form the sensations, the overall concepts that Scott and I had been sharing over the span of a year or so. At best, to touch someone with our music again."

As a teaser, the band have released the That's What I Wanted... Exactly That EP, which has two songs that will appear on the upcoming full-length. If the EP songs are any indication of the rest of the new album, Wheat fans have every reason to be excited. The extra production of Per Second has mercifully been done away with, leaving only the familiar, heartbreaking songs full of melody and texture that take the best parts of folk, electronica, shoegaze and slowcore to produce that undeniably unique Wheat sound.

The new album, Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square, will be released some time in the spring, after which the band intend to tour.

"As far as future recordings go, who knows?" Harney says. "It'll take more living to inform more music.

"I love the spirit of the new album. It feels so alive to me. It feels like those moments in there working on it. And it has a ton of heart, I think. Not in a totally self-conscious way, it just is."