Containing a bunch of intriguing players, Winged Wheel are up-ending noise rock. Big Hotel, the collective's new record on 12XU, is a bunch of heavy riffs, exploratory noodling, and glorious feedback. In a word, one of this week's best releases then.
Who's here? Cory Plump (Spray Paint), Fred Thomas (Tyvek), Whitney Johnson (Matchess), Matthew J. Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo), Lonnie Slack (Water Damage), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) are. These heavy hitters pool their strengths here to inject a lot of fire into Big Hotel. The opener, "Demonstrably False" churns atop roiling guitars, gradually building up into something impressive and unsettling, while the breathy "Sleeptraining" is both rhythmically precise but also sort of catchy. Elsewhere, "Grief in the Garden" imagines Can crafting something propulsive out of the shards of American garage rock, while "Aren't They All" is faintly Stooges-ish in its presentation of a lopside hook atop noisy riffs.
There are many directions from which one can approach Big Hotel. The myriad of sounds here reflects not only the diverse backgrounds of the players, but also the diversity within U.S. noise rock itself. That isn't even a genre, really, but a catch-all term used to describe the sorts of bands the players are usually associated with. Together here, as Winged Wheel, they are making stuff that pushes in new directions, pushes buttons, and roars with invention. This is the kind of music you'd have heard on Homestead Records a few decades ago. That's an ear-ringing endorsement if there ever was one.
Big Hotel by Winged Wheel is out now by 12XU.
[Photo: Winged Wheel Bandcamp]