AltCountry: Brown Shoe's The Wheat Patch

Intricately simple. Brown Shoe’s The Wheat Patch is a study in simple songs that glide along effortlessly but then are buoyed, bounced, and thrown higher into the air by some intricate touches.

“Traveling” blends the band’s harmony vocals in an airy wash like Coldplay, Keane, or Muse, but the guitar and drums actually seem to pick up on some sound I’ve heard across many areas of the Spectrum—Coley Park (Folk-influenced IRE/UK Rock), Grand Drive (Country-influenced Rock), Lucid Fate (AltCountry), Loner (AltCountry), and My Morning Jacket (Jam Band).

Yet, many tracks on The Wheat Patch find their key from an intricate detail. For instance, “Northern Lights” gets it from Jim Mikesell’s handclap drum backbeats. Those are the moments that pick up these floating tunes by adding just enough punctuation to cause you to look up from what you’re doing and realize that the music has just touched you like your own heartbeat.

Thank you to Brown Shoe for the review copy.