Winged Wheel: Big Hotel

While their name is a nod to their native Detroit, you don’t have to be familiar with the Red Wings logo or ice hockey to understand the mechanics behind Winged Wheel.

Formed by Whitney Johnson (Matchess), Matthew J Rolin (Powers / Rolin Duo), Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit et al) and Fred Thomas (Tyvek), while stretching the mind to far corners with their 2022 debut, No Island, Winged Wheel take it to another level with their follow-up, Big Hotel.

Stockpiling their arsenal with the addition of Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and Water Damage’s Lonnie Slack, both are key additions to this new incarnation of the band. With regards to Slack, the Water Damage link isn’t as far away as some might think. While both bands share the same label, if the Texas avant-gardists ever tried to sound remotely like a conventional act, then they’d be rubbing shoulders with Winged Wheel. Not in sound, but the aesthetics both acts produce closely align, and Slack’s inclusion here adds new dimensions to an already dynamic concern.

Winged Wheel: No Island

Like their label mates, Winged Wheel create music for themselves and no one else, and that’s what makes Big Hotel the goliath that it is. A goldrush of ideas that sees a band fraught with tension, exploring the fault lines in search of a specific frequency. And at regular intervals throughout Big Hotel, Winged Wheel find it.

On opener, Demonstrably False, the band sets the scene with stirring drones and echoes that create a vibe not a world away from Primal Scream’s Shoot Speed Kill Light. There’s more at play here, though, as a majestic, multi-layered cosmic rush of sound induces new possibilities.

The maelstrom continues with Sleeptraining, as Winged Wheel merge maze-like krautrock with barrelling alt-rock, and the collision is fierce. The tourism of sound continues with Clean Blue Shelf. Here, the band straddle the orbits with inflections of sci-fi laser-beam drones that feels like a visceral interpretation on Spaceman 3’s defining works.

Then there’s the transcendental majesty of Grief in the Garden. Flashes and thunderbolts from iron-grey skies, it’s the best song Winged Wheel have released over their two-album reign. It’s the kind of cut that makes indie-rock dangerous again, worlds away from the formulaic tropes that have blighted the genre for so many years now.

Meanwhile Smudged Textile merges the inner freedom of Can and the feel good factor of, say, Yo La Tengo. Johnson’s harmonies, overriding Rolin’s searching guitar in what is a band scouring through the record collection to extract the best bits. And the same could be said of aptly titled Soft Hands – celestial dream-rock that ends with a countrified slant, feeding into Short Acting. Melodic noodling informed by the band’s experimental core, which sees Winged Wheel taking post-rock where it needs to go in 2024.

Chris Corsano Interview: “Collaboration is essential for me.”

Taking the distinguished groove of Demonstrably False, From Here Out Nothing Changes ends Big Hotel just as it started. Frenetic, forward-thinking and assured, as both songs provide the bookends to this enthralling saga.

With each member drawing from their involvements from other projects both past and present, these ideas are the nucleus to Big Hotel. Concepts from contrasting sound worlds that coalesce for something beautifully off-kilter. At its core, it’s psychedelic and rock, but it isn’t psychedelic rock. Winged Wheel are too evasive for that, and the fact you never quite know where this band will take you is their hallmark card. And on Big Motel, Winged Wheel play it emphatically.

It’s music that is a celebration for lifers, and while Winged Wheel should be reaching a far wider audience than they are, for those already immersed in this journey, well… consider it a privilege.

Big Hotel is out now via 12XU. Purchase from Bandcamp.