CD REVIEW: The Wheel Workers “Past to Present”

The Wheel Workers “Past to Present”

            Regardless of any other label attached to The Wheel Workers, or anything I might write about them in this review, just know if nothing else that they are a toe-tapping rocking band.

            The music itself has that pop indie rock feel to it, which can be found in lesser ways in more mainstream bands, but that is coupled with lyrics about the simplest of things to protest songs.   Songs such as “Starve the Beast” and “Compromise” could be compared to a band like Interpol, while a song like “Drone” would be easiest to compare to The Killers, for a radio sort of focal reference point. 

            “Past to Present” begins sounding like “Ok Computer” era Radiohead only with that electric quality that could be something along the line of The Rentals and let’s all be honest, “Ok Computer” era is the best Radiohead era.  You can also pick out pieces of bands in here from They Might Be Giants and The B-52’s right down to the fact that “Fine Time” has a certain rhythm to it that I think came from an old episode of Batman (Adam West style)

            My favorite song on this album though is “Chemicals”, mainly because of the contrast in not wanting our children to grow up in a world full of chemicals but also the fact that we have to take our chemicals to feel better.   It’s like one of those moral issues when you tell your children, “Don’t take drugs… except---“

            In the end, this is still just a rocking album that you must listen to while tapping your foot along and hopefully getting something out of the lyrics.   I must add though, that as I listen to this album and sit inside a Dunkin Donuts in central Connecticut, I can’t help but find it funny that there is a group of old white men at a table to my right having a discussion about the government.   They’re complaining about healthcare and money in contrast to the way these songs are singing about them.   I want to give them my headphones to listen to this song, but you know, they’re really old and germs and all.

http://thewheelworkers.bandcamp.com/album/past-to-present