Winged Wheel: No Island LP (12XU, 2022)

April 29, 2022 at 5:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Winged Wheel: No Island LP

Winged Wheel is a remote collaboration between four musicians whose various projects are always a must-listen: Whitney Johnson (Matchess), Cory Plump (Spray Paint), Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo), and Fred Thomas (no intro necessary). Fred sent drum loops over to Cory, who added guitar and bass parts, Matthew added further guitars, and Whitney sang in her familiar submerged style, although her voice is a little clearer in the mix here. While clearly a studio creation, there’s such a distinctive chemistry to this album that it’s obvious that all four musicians’ spirits are in one place, even if their bodies aren’t. The drums hold it all in place, and the guitars and effects are just vast canopies of sound, with the vocals driving it all home. “Blue Pigeon” is just some next level dream pop. All of the artists involved bring their own personalities to this group, from Spray Paint’s blown-axis distortion to City Center’s basement punk dreaminess and Hydropark’s motorik pop to Matchess’s out-of-body mysticism, but here they coalesce into something else entirely. Wonderful.

Leave a Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

The Answer Is In The Beat