Sony
2003
Per Second, Per Second, Per Second... Every Second
About This Album
Wheat's fourth full-length effort arrives -- finally -- from Aware via Columbia, a full four years after the attractive indie fuzz of Hope and Adams. The label woes that caused the delay are notable only in their role as threshers for shucking Wheat from limbo to Aware, and turning Per Second, Per Second, Per Second...Every Second into the perfect record to shop at the end of 2003. In many ways, the Cambridge, MA, trio is like a Toad the Wet Sprocket for the 21st century. Just as Glen Phillips and his pals made mature pop music for a mid-'90s audience burned out on grunge, Wheat wants to dance with Jon Mayer's people, if only to show off the sculpted indie scuff on its fancy popternative shoes. Hope helmsman and Mercury Revver Dave Fridmann returns for Per Second. He tricks out relatively sweet and straightforward songs like "These Are Things," "I Met a Girl," and "Life Still Applies" with enough layered vocal and instrumental dynamics to posit them sufficiently past normal, but close enough to the mainstream to read the tag on its bra strap. It doesn't get much more accessible than "Some Days"' ooh ooh oohs and propulsive, almost dance-pop beat.
Track List (try tracks 1,6,8 and 11)

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