Earlier single, Coyote Mask, was enough of a sonic encounter to make me realise that The Wheel is an artist worth keeping an eye on…or should that be an ear…and so a full-length album landing in the review pile is undoubtedly cause for celebration.
Ten songs that ebb and flow between the more ambient and seductive and a more pop-orientated singer-songwriter style. On the one hand, you have songs full of drift and drama, classical grace and understated grandeur, such as Can’t Find You; on the other, the more David Grey-esque Crashing Down, and make no mistake, getting compared to such an artist is about as good as it gets in my book.
And between these two sonic points, you find songs such as Love & Truth, which chime and indeed charm with late-era Beatles psychedelic sonics. Again, there is no small benchmark to see yourself being measured up to.
Then, when you think that you have him pegged, Avram Brown, the man behind The Wheel, throws in a track like Almuerzo Con Carney, an odd and beguiling slice of avant-garde jazz.
It might be Coyote Mask that brings you to this album, and it may even be representative of his music, for the most part. But as this fuller immersion into his music proves, much more is happening with The Wheel than meets the eye. Damn it…I mean ear.
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