WINGED WHEEL - Desert So Green

Canvases, plain and simple, on which to lay down brushstrokes of color, on which to stamp one's own art. Canvases arranged not necessarily in chronological order: the first is titled "Canvas 11," a post-rock crescendo that hints at an explosion which ultimately never comes, amid guitar interplay and rhythms that surface without any particular urgency. Then, slowly, a return to placidity, before diving into the second canvas, "Canvas 2," with a more biting pace, featuring a female voice reminiscent of the Breeders searching for room within a blanket of sound, and guitars drawing inspiration from the sharpest edges of nineties alternative rock. These are the preparatory acts before the first real deflagration, "Speed Table," whose opening 33 seconds are carried solely by electric guitar, before everything else comes crashing in...

Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth and a thousand other projects) and Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Circuit des Yeux) are merely the crowning jewels of a lineup made up of musicians well accustomed to navigating no-wave avant-gardism, restless post-punk and murky garage sounds; alongside the two of them we find Cory Plump (Spray Paint), Matthew J. Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo), Lonnie Slack (Water Damages) and Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Tyvek). There's every reason to call it a "supergroup," but Winged Wheel is no fleeting side project meant to fill spare time, quite the opposite: "Desert So Green" is the band's third album, and over five or six years its lineup has expanded, gaining eclecticism, until arriving at a sound that today can move in multiple directions at once, a sound in constant metamorphosis.

They're equally skilled at handling both the placidly dark atmospheres of "Beautiful Holy Jewel Home" (a post-punk troubled and played with open wounds) and the experimental paths of "Canvas 8" (another canvas, this one housing noise ruptures), but the cathartic moment arrives with "More Frog Poems," a full-bodied slowcore piece that bleeds nocturnal melancholy, where Winged Wheel sound like a Sonic Youth under anesthesia, a Yo La Tengo in ecstasy. "Bird Spells" is a worthy continuation, laid out over kraut furrows in a gentle crescendo, with a surprise ending, a brief snapshot of the band caught "jamming" in the rehearsal room.

"I See Poseurs Every Day" returns to more conventionally nineties alt-rock territory, just before the velvety psychedelia with Indian overtones of "The Suite Goes Day" leads us by the hand towards the journey's end.

Take note: the first 2026 album to fall hopelessly in love with.

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06/02/2026