Today's Soundtrack: A big question, and Wheat
Today's Soundtrack is an occasional feature that takes the events or mood of a day -- and attempts to find a song for it. Today's artist: Wheat
By Ben Collins, Globe Correspondent
Here's a question that you've come across in the past couple of weeks, probably because of Beatles Rock Band. Maybe your friend came up to you in a hurried panic thinking he was the first person to think of it. Maybe you were That Guy.
The question is this: Who is going to be the preeminent, genre-defining band of this generation? When we listen to oldies or classic rock stations in our hovercrafts in 25 years, singing in between sips of moonwater, who is going to be the band around which every other band fashioned its sound?
But what if the answer is that there is no answer? What if the question was really this: What band did the best job of evolving all of these years?
"It's sort of like perpetually being in a singles bar," says Scott Levesque. "No matter what you've got, there's always a guy who comes along after with something different. I just think we've done a good job of hanging around."
Levesque is the lead singer of Wheat, a Boston-based indie rock outfit that's been putting out records for a shade over a decade now.
If we're using the corollary above -- what bands over the past 20 years were the most evolutionary, not revolutionary -- you'd probably have to break it down by genre.
No Doubt, for example, is probably the most evolutionary pop group. Fifteen years ago, they were an enormously popular ska band. A decade later, Gwen Stefani put out "Hollaback Girl", a hip hop song so popular that the world never spelled "bananas" wrong ever again.
And if there's an indie rock band that was usually one sonic step ahead of their genre, changing their sound every album, it might have been Wheat.
"I'm not going to say which is right and which isn't. There are bands like Yo La Tengo, who have been keeping about the same sound for a long time time now and have done brilliant things with it. But it's been a very necessary thing -- for us to go where we want the songs to go -- to change our sound," said Levesque. "We're never really satisfied. We're always changing."
Here's a quick play-by-play of their discography: Wheat released their first record, Medeiros, in 1998 and their follow-up Hope and Adams a year later.
I heard three songs from Hope and Adams last year and had assumed they had been released recently. The songs were 10 years old.
Wheat brushed radio-hit fame with "I Met A Girl" in 2003, when everyone was still reeling from September 11 and wanted music with nice melodies in it. This song had a nice melody in it.
Wheat then took some time to do "adult things," Levesque said. He moved back near his home town, Taunton, so he could put his kid in a good school system. Wheat reshuffled guitarists and put out the moodier "Every Day I Say a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square."
Their latest, White Ink/Black Ink is a combination of those hooks with that yearning for meaning that infiltrated independent music at the end of the '90s and the end of '00s.
They'll be showing it off when they headline the Middle East Downstairs on Saturday night, a lone fall show in their hometown.
The album is bipolar as its title. Levesque got the idea for the album when he saw some graffiti that screamed, in all caps, "I HAVE MORALS."
"I thought it was beautiful. For the first time in a long time, I feel like people have something to say," said Levesque. "I still believe in the magic of that hook. Some of those (melodies) come from a definitive place, some are just intangible."
That graffiti outlines the entire album too: definitively complex lyrics over a bright landscape. It's the indie rock of 2010 in 2009. Just like Wheat was the indie rock of 2004 in 2003. Just like they were the indie rock of the '00s in 1999.
"We've always been part of that sort of zeitgeist, I think," said Levesque. "But we just want to let (our album) be what it is and hope it still works later."
Today's Soundtrack: Wheat - Half of the Time (H.O.T.T.)
Show: Saturday, Middle East Downstairs. Doors open at 8. $12, 18+. Wheat, Jukebox The Ghost, The Motion Sick, The Needy Visions.
Wheat's Elevator Pitch: "It's the most fun a Wheat show has ever been. Bring your dancing shoes. There's a lot of room to move for us now. It's such a great time. It is for me, anyway." -- Levesque
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