Written by: Alex Green
Drummer Brendan Harney of Wheat has died.
Born Peter Brendan Harney, the Massachusetts-raised musician was sixty-one.
Formed in 1996 in Taunton, Wheat were one of those rare bands who arrived fully-formed. Their discography is an air-tight collection of some of the most arresting, infectious pop music you’ll ever hear. Filled with percussive digressions, lyrical ingenuity and irresistible choruses, on their debut album Medeiros, Wheat demonstrated a complete mastery of the pop idiom and spent the rest of their career embroidering inventive musical architecture onto that perfect pop framework with consistently winning results.
Harney was more than just a drummer; he was a true sonic builder who had a preternatural gift for harnessing the beats of the world. An innovative percussionist whose imaginative rhythms rolled steadily through each composition, Harney’s originality and imagination make him one of the most fascinating and criminally under-the-radar drummers of the last thirty years.
