Wheat

with Carissa’s Weird and Melody Unit

The Sit & Spin, Seattle, WA • September 12, 2000

Marcel Feldmar

The night was like a strange ride from outer space straight through your heart and into just alive and flying. While the headliners were the Boston-based Wheat, it seemed that the majority of the crowd had ventured out to say farewell to the latest beautiful band to leave Seattle for Portland, Carissa’s Weird. Yeah, we lost another one. Opening act Melody Unit, though a bit dissatisfied with their vision of the city, played a full and beautiful set. Lush and rolling and drifting somewhere between dreamy pop and shoegazing rock.

The floor was packed by the time Carissa’s Weird came on, and they did not disappoint. Playing delicate melodic songs, both uplifting and melancholy, they brought the audience to an almost hypnotized hush with some new songs, and selections from their debut CD, Ugly But Honest.

The crowd thinned out a little by the time Wheat appeared, but not by much. The sound in the room was perfect, and the shift from the previous band’s slow sadness to the opening pop strains of the headliners was pure surreal joy. You could feel the energy rise and smile. Throwing out early songs to the audience like gifts, Wheat moved around the stage, twisting the guitar strings and sliding over the keyboards. The drums hit like heartbeats and you know they were right there, happy to be playing. The crowd started cheering as they moved into more recent material and the first notes of “Don’t I Hold You” drifted out and over, and from that, they moved into “Body Talk (Part II)” and everyone sang along with shouts of “Queen Of Corona.”

Comparing the live show to the CD is almost a waste of time, as the delicate nature on Hope And Adams, their latest release, makes it an excellent album, on stage Wheat took the energy up and put harder dynamics, sharper edges on the songs, and gave them to us without letting them lose any of that beauty. ◼