E-Mail This Article to a Friend Good company Wheat, Loveless, and the Spaceshots BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Wheat are driving through New Mexico in their van as we speak, midway through a tour opening for ex-indie-rock sweetheart Liz Phair. There’s something poetic about catching up to the band from the Taunton–Fall River area as they cruise the highways of the Southwest. With wide-open spaces broken by mesas and gorges, the land is big-boned and beautiful. Yet though the bold geologic features are captivating, it’s the region’s tiny details — plants, birds, anthills, hoodoos — that make the terrain pulse with life and character.

So it is with Wheat’s music, especially on their major-label debut, Per Second Per Second Per Second . . . Every Second (Aware/Columbia). The dozen songs all have strong bones. "Life Still Applies" thrives on a fat bass line and the propulsive growl of slashing guitar chords, but the plink of a glockenspiel is what first tugs at the ear, followed by a Morse-code guitar melody and the group’s caramel harmonies, and then a wash of keyboards that soothes as the lyrics grapple with the search for happiness. The album begins with "I Met a Girl," a soaring pop tune powered by a blend of acoustic and electric guitars and Scott Levesque’s Bono-like vocal melody. As Levesque toys with the idea of diving into romance, choked chords and spare buzzing notes — creating a sense of excitement balanced by hesitancy — keep the choruses humming until the bridge, where a conversational call-and-response vocal over just organ and piano creates a Beatles moment. By the time "This Rough Magic" ends the CD with an unabashed tribute to the joys and the confusions of love, the sonic topography has been opened up in all sorts of directions — guitar melodies used as rhythms, percussive hits on cymbals turned into sugar frosting for slightly melancholy verses, reverb employed to stretch voices into alien instruments — and Wheat have rocked and cooed their way through an album that proves their command of a sound that’s a balance between the classic and the contemporary.

Per Second Per Second Per Second . . . Every Second has been released in good company. New discs from Loveless and the Spaceshots also prove that there’s vitality in the modern-rock division of Boston’s pop scene. All three discs blend textured sonics, reflective lyrics, and generous hooks in ways that shimmer with imagination and scope. In Wheat’s case, their latest — which follows a pair of indie releases on the Sugarfree label — also displays an easy mastery of their own æsthetic, without regard for trends. "We’ve been slugging it out for about seven years and have grown a lot, so I think we’re more confident about what we’re doing," says guitarist Ricky Brennan. "We’re comfortable experimenting, pursuing creative ideas and just letting the vast array of music that the three of us listen to — from jazz to classic rock to R&B — filter into our music." Brennan, who formed Wheat with Levesque and drummer Brendan Harvey, explains that Per Second Per Second Per Second . . . Every Second was intended as "a journey from song to song. When we go in to record, we never know where we’re headed, other than to make music we really enjoy listening to, and we keep working until we feel good about it. This time we were trying to write really melodic, more cheerful songs rather than take an approach where we were dealing with themes of anger or confusion. That was more fun for us and hopefully for listeners, too."

Scoring a major-label deal has given Wheat more freedom. "We’re not wearing fur coats or anything, and we drive around in our 15-passenger van, not a bus, but it has enabled us to have more time to work in the studio with really good people and to be able to make as good an album as we could."

Fleshed out to five pieces for their tour, Wheat will travel with Phair until Thanksgiving, when they’ll return home for a break and then regroup on December 5 for a show at the Middle East. Meanwhile, Brennan describes the Phair tour as "a great opportunity. We get to play almost every night, and it’s awesome because she headlines respectable-sized places and we get to perform in front of a fair amount of people. It’s a fun challenge to go out in front of people who have no idea who you are and try to wow them."

DAVE WANAMAKER’S previous band, Expanding Man, had a series of high-profile opening slots including a tour with Stone Temple Pilots following their 1996 album Head to the Ground (Columbia). Despite a ton of promise, their second CD was put in limbo thanks to the fast-buck mentality of their corporate label, and the muscular Expanding Man collapsed. But Wanamaker soldiered on, writing songs and demoing them with Peter Armata, Expanding Man’s bassist. When they had a passel written, they decided it was time to form a new group. A sticking point for Wanamaker was who would sling the group’s other six-string as he sang. "Pete and I were sitting around hashing that out and, chauvinistically, I was just thinking about guys who were good," he explains over the phone. "Then I remembered that Jen Trynin and I had joked around about playing guitar together, so I called her and asked, ‘Do you want to play in my band?’ And that was it." Trynin, a respected songwriter and performer, had also been through the major-label wringer with her own solo career, but it was obvious right from the start of Loveless — a band name Wanamaker nicked from a My Bloody Valentine album title — that their joy in playing rock and roll hadn’t been squashed by their bad business experiences.

Although Trynin and drummer Tom Polce live here and Wanamaker and Armata in New York City, Loveless became tight as neighbors who share coffee every morning over the course of hitting the stage and putting out the 2001 EP Loveless (Q Division). Their new album has the big-balls title Gift to the World (Q Division). And though Wanamaker’s lyrics are threaded with thoughtful introspection, the CD’s 10 songs often sound audacious. In the title track, the guitars play out in a gigantic spray that practically screams along with Wanamaker on the fat choruses. On the other tip, there’s the affirming ballad "You Wore Me Out," where Trynin’s high backing harmonies and Wanamaker’s own warm timbre capture the complexity of surviving a hard relationship with soul and pride intact.

The sheen and the depth of the album may surprise fans of the band’s raw live attack. Wanamaker says that’s the result of his and producer Mike Denneen’s taste for expansive sonics. After all, there’s Wanamaker’s nod to My Bloody Valentine, and he confesses to a love for Catherine Wheel, the late British band who were one of his models as he made the transition from guitarist to frontman. Turn the reverb up on Gift to the World and Loveless would sound like an English band themselves, right down to the precision of the vocal inflections on the choruses of "Beautiful" and "Cold."

The opening "Go," meanwhile, has been put in rotation at WFNX and is getting spins at WBCN — and it jumps out on both stations. With its straddle of guitar grind and sweet vocal harmonies resting on catchy lyrics that reflect on self-worth, it’s a refreshing break from the bland and brainless stuff that’s the stock of most contemporary rock radio. Wanamaker is encouraged by the warm airwave reception, and he’s happy to be working with the conscientious, near-communal Q Division label, a home for some of the area’s finest purveyors of bright-eyed pop with guts. As far as aspirations go, "if Loveless is going to develop into something bigger, I’d just like to see the album and the band grow naturally."

Live, Loveless still pack a nasty snarl as their trump card, and it’s the vocal and guitar interplay between Wanamaker and Trynin that turns the trick. "Jen and I both like to play loud. She wears earplugs, so she never really knows how loud her guitar is. But what we both like to do is rock out and have fun, and that’s what Loveless lets us do — at our own pace, without any pressure."

THE LATEST GROUP to come into Q Division’s orbit are the Spaceshots, precise peddlers of pop that goes "roar" who made their album at the label’s Somerville-based studio with Loveless drummer Polce producing. For Patrick Emswiler, the wiry head Spaceshot, the band’s debut full-length, Siren Sounds (on ex-Cherrydisc chief John Horton’s Hearbox.com label), comes with plenty of expectations. The band, with help from Horton, are seeking a major-label deal for their brand of gnarly radio-ready songs.

"We really want to go for it as hard and fast as we can," says Emswiler, making a refreshing break from the false modesty that’s a shield for so many young indie-rockers with higher aspirations. Right now his four-piece line-up is less than a year old and has already plucked some plum opening slots, like the recent stint before fans of Bettie Serveert at T.T. the Bear’s. Hearing them belt out the punny "The Misery Love Co." and the nakedly catchy "Offense/Defense," you could see how the band could be on their way to a breakthrough.

Like Wheat, Emswiler also has his roots in Taunton, where the band he formerly played in, the Sterlings, formed. "I’m kind of a sentimentalist, and you can always hear that my songs have to convey an emotion. In the Sterlings, we had that indie thing going on, where it was cool to just stand on stage and stare at your shoes. This band isn’t about that. We want to be a great live band and put on a great show, which is really right for my songs because they’re full of emotion. So I’m trying to make an impact this time — making the sound and the show more of a smack in the face, but paying attention to catchy melodies and stick-in-your head choruses." All of which makes the Spaceshots pretty damn savvy, despite their name.

Wheat appear December 5 at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call (617) 864-EAST.