(photo: Beth Freeman Dorein)

There are some very specific periods of my life where I’ve experienced “musical rebirth”; a time where I discover a new style or scene that reaffirms my love for recorded sound and makes me genuinely excited about music again after going through and extended period where things are boring and repetitive.  Most (if not all) of my favourite albums come from these periods of rebirth, and Hope & Adams by Wheat, which came out waaaay back in 1999, is one of my favourite records from a period that was extremely emotional and personal to me.

I lost my Dad to cancer on August 7, 1999, and during that summer, I would go for daily walks along the canal armed with my CD player (this is so pre-iPod) and the same old same old records I’d been listening to for ages.  They were familiar and comfortable, and at that time comfort and familiarity were welcomed in the face of the uncertainties my family was facing.  It was just around this time that I discovered the ease and convenience of buying CDs and books online, so after my father’s death, when those old records started carrying too many memories to revisit, I started looking for something new, and Hope & Adams was just the ticket.  It’s a brilliant album in the same experimental vein as Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and, along with Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, marked a musical rebirth for me that found me immersed in American indie rock.

In the intervening years, I’ve followed Wheat’s career in fits and starts, but never found anything that made as much an impact on me as hearing that initial album (which was their second disc).  Now, 10 years on, I’m finding myself in need of another musical rebirth, so it’s timely that there’s something new from Wheat.  “H.O.T.T.” is the first offering from the band’s new disc, White Ink, Black Ink, out July 21.  I’m digging the skip-happy beats that push the song into dance-pop territory, but as ever, the earthy, organic sound of Wheat grounds the track.  The album was initially scheduled for a May release, so here’s hoping there’s not going to be any further delay.

For those who’d like to investigate what it was that made me take notice of the band in the first place, Hope & Adams and Medeiros, their first two albums, have been reissued together (thanks to Frank Chromewaves for pointing us in that direction), and you can sample one of my favourite tracks from Hope & Adams below, “Body Talk (Part 2)”.

MP3: Wheat “H.O.T.T.”
MP3: Wheat “Body Talk (Part 2)”
Myspace: Wheat