Canvas: A Brief Review Of The New Album From Winged Wheel (Sonic Youth, Circuit des Yeux, Spray Paint)

Winged Wheel is a super-group. The players here come from a host of bands who have consistently been pushing the envelope, and the records they make are invigorating. The new one, Desert So Green is full of sharp edges, noise and quietude, and a whole lot of energy.

Who is Winged Wheel? Cory Plump (Spray Paint), Fred Thomas (Tyvek), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Circuit des Yeux), Matthew J. Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo), Lonnie Slack (Water Damage), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) are. Opener "Canvas 11" opens up vast space. A listener settles in. "Canvas 2" mixes submerged vocals with rumbles. The trap has been set and now we're in a land of unnerving-yet-compelling sounds. The Gang of Four-y crunch of "Speed Table" is a delight, recalling also the best material from Band of Susans so many decades ago. Better still is the sinister "More Frog Poems" where the vocals are so deep in the mix that you'd think you were playing some lost Loop side from the late Eighties. The clanging guitars are atop stretched out chords, and the simple rhythm keeps this one plodding forward in a cool way.

I'll repeat what I've said about Winged Wheel before in an earlier review: "This is the kind of music you'd have heard on Homestead Records a few decades ago." It is a very American kind of post-punk, one we'd have called college rock at one point when I worked in a bunch of record stores. What's on Desert So Green is by turns brash and soothing, the noisy bits paired with moments of unexpected melodicism. It's challenging, but not so abrasive as to be alienating. Winged Wheel know exactly how to make a racket and make it quite listenable indeed.

Desert So Green by Winged Wheel is out now by 12XU.

[Photo: Katie McElroy]