SELLING POINTS:
;
Wheat's last full length record has
soundscanned over 30,000 copies in the
United States, with their last full length
release in Europe selling over 20,000 copies.
;
Wheat have shared the stage with
everybody from Death Cab for Cutie to
Oasis to The Flaming Lips. They have toured
all over the world, including back to back
performances on both Late Night with
Conan O'Brien and Last Call with Carson
Daly.
;
Wheat is adored by the press and their
previous releases have made record of the
year in everything from NME, MOJO, to
UNCUT. They have been featured in Rolling
Stone, SPIN, Entertainment Weekly, NY
Times, and everything in-between.
;
Wheat are a favorite among film and TV
music supervisors and have had many high
profile film and TV placements including,
Wheat fan, Cameron Crowe's highly visible
Elizabethtown, where the band was also
featured on the soundtrack. This release is
being worked by the band's publisher,
Chrysalis Music Publishing.
;
Extensive domestic publicity, radio, and
video campaigns. Wheat's last full length
did very well at AAA/Commercial radio,
receiving almost 10,000 commercial spins
nationally for their single "I Met a Girl".
S t r e e t D a t e : M a y 2 2 , 2 0 0 7
L a b e l : E m p y r e a n R e c o r d s
C a t a l o g # : S K Y 0 2 6
F o r m a t : C D
U P C : 8 0 3 6 4 5 0 0 2 6 2 6
TRACKS
:
01
closeness
02
little white dove
03
move=move
04
i had angels watching over me
05
init .005 (formerly, a case of...)
06
saint in law
07
what you got
08
to, as in addressing the grave
09
round in the corners
10
an exhausted fixer
11
courting ed templeton
Memory plays a crucial role in the music of Wheat, one of the most enigmatic
and compelling rock bands of the past decade. And never more profoundly has
the theme, the *act*, of remembering played so critical a role in the making of
that music than on the Massachusetts outfit’s stunning new Empyrean Records
CD, “Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square.” Even
the album’s cryptic title, drummer Brendan Harney explains, is “about
remembering through a ritual. We lose things we love, sometimes, in life.
People turn corners and things change ... Then we decide to make a square,
simply to remember – or hope, maybe.” Wheat’s fourth full-length album, and
the core of the band itself, is about all of those things.
What began 10 years ago as a brilliant art project in sound between Harney
and Scott Levesque (vocals, guitar) at the University of Massachusetts-
Dartmouth (where both were, in fact, art students) has now been restored to its
beginnings, original luster intact. From the celestial shimmer of “Closeness,”
which opens the new album, to the pastoral instrumental poem, “Courting Ed
Templeton,” which closes it, “Everyday I Said A Prayer ...” marks a splendid
return to the incandescent form that yielded Wheat’s bumper crop of
masterworks that included 1997's “Medeiros,” and 1999's indie-pop gem, “Hope
and Adams.”
2003's “Per Second, Per Second, Per Second ... Every Second” represented
the band’s foray into the major label sweepstakes – a stint which brought with it
heavy touring, high-profile TV appearances, and ultimately, misery. Second
guitarist Ricky Brennan bade the band farewell. Exhausted and disillusioned,
Wheat retreated into a long silence. Rumors that the band had broken up were
not so quiet. “We just needed a break,” recalls Levesque. Adds Harney: “We
had to decide what we wanted (Wheat) to be.”
Eventually, the two old friends, restless to make music again, re-convened
between the summers of 2005 and 2006 to try out some new tracks, just to see
where the songs and ideas might lead. They had no label. They had no
recording schedule. They had no deadlines. But they remembered the old
rituals, and in doing so, discovered they were able to reclaim the supernal
sound, ineffable chemistry, and music-magic of Wheat. “We were in that great
spot again,” says Levesque. “We make records in our own little world, and
that’s where we went to.” It was, and continues to be, a luminescent universe
gilded with dreams and benedictions and cosmic imagination. Now at long last,
with "Everyday I Said A Prayer..." Wheat has returned and is back among us in
our world, right where it belongs.
– Jonathan Perry, 2007
N O E X P O R T O U T S I D E
N O R T H A M E R I C A