Southeast Engine A Wheel Within a Wheel WB rating out of 100

Over the thousands of years of popular music, religious allegory has been inextricably tied in with the music of the day, bringing faith to the masses and popularizing secularism in equal measure. Roger McGuinn, when asked of his jingle-jangle reinvention of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ said “I don’t care what Dylan was doing, I was turning it into a prayer’, a naked display of pious adherence in an increasingly atheist society, where every psalm is a song of some kind. But today, religious convictions are harder to get away with. The desire for fame, fortune and commercial success can easily override religious conviction, as any member of Creed or Evanescence can attest to.

Southeast Engine, a six-piece from Athens, Ohio, in their own pursuit of recognition, have inverted that tack. A Wheel Within a Wheel is a biblical reference. No ordinary biblical reference, but one suitably arcane as to have almost limitless meanings. It has something to do with the book of Isaiah. Or the book of Ezekiel. And something about four-headed monsters, and probably the apocalypse; and it may be in some way related to wheels. The album, however, is not about religious experiences, or the end of the world, for that matter; a very loose theme about personal discovery meanders its way across 13 tracks of wide-eyed, middle-Americana folk-rock.

A Wheel Within a Wheel beings, fittingly enough, with the sound of wheels – within wheels, presumably – and given the cover art, it’s lucky that these wheels are clearly of the wooden 19th century variety, and not appropriated from a monster truck. As these wheels slow down in a kind of pre-industrial age version of Wheel of Fortune, it feels for all the world as though someone’s about to lose a turn, until ‘Taking the Fall’ kicks in, and the lead-in sound effects cease to have any meaningful purpose whatsoever, other than being a quaint intro.

Because ‘Taking the Fall’ is something of a barnstormer. And all the press jargon floating around referring to ‘folk-rock’ feels a touch unseemly. It’s a rollicking ride through Okkervil River-style mid-western rock, and it’s a corker, alternating between raucous choruses and stripped-back, rapid-fire verses. It’s also a little bit postmodern for a bunch of gents from a place called Athens that isn’t in Greece. “Where nothing means everything/And everything is tied to you and me” sings Adam Remnant. Whatever that means.

From beginning to end of A Wheel Within a Wheel, whether intentional or not, is the sound of a bunch of young gents straining to escape from the malaise imposed upon them by their environment. Literate, intelligent, ambitious men constrained by a hometown which is almost certainly anything but. Athens, Ohio, could be called Arlington, or Aurora, or Avondale, or any other anonymous small town, these examples being cropped from a single station of the alphabet. And nowhere is this constrained ambition best illustrated than in the music itself.

Song after song of good ideas, held back by the presence of a generation of American rock holding sway, of lyrics with something meaningful (or artfully meaningless) to say, but obscured within the confines of that most nebulous title, 'folk-rock'. Southeast Engine seem to understand and recognize this when blatantly plagiarizing the master of beige folkisms, Cat Stevens, on 'Reinventing Light', taking the chords and guitar from 'Peace Train', while overlaying it with lyrics far smarter and a violin which adds pathos that was absent in the original.

As if to cap this off, Remnant sounds as though he stole the voice from Australia's own king of banality, Bernard Fanning, most clearly on 'State of Oblivion', which channels Powderfinger at near their best. Lyrically, however, Remnant leaves Fanning in the shade – there is nothing here as bile-inducingly trite as 'Restless future burning bright/The past is holding on so tight….I just want to wish you well".

Despite the inability to push boundaries, blaze trails or reinvent, well, wheels, A Wheel Within a Wheel is an impressively competent outing, with some genuine highlights. 'We Have You Surrounded', while having a totally cool name, is a two minute intermission which spends one and a half setting the listener up for a killer closing chorus, and 'Oh God, Let Me Back In', a slow-burning, heartfelt number which brings to mind I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning-era Bright Eyes.

The religious metaphor on A Wheel Within a Wheel seems overwhelmingly appropriate, despite the absence of any blatant proselytizing. Notions of the apocalypse and the thoughts of deep thinkers are all here, but repressed and curtailed by the chains of an inbred musical family tree. Southeast Engine have the songwriting chops, the musical talent, and the (bridled) ambition to achieve something great. All the signs are here, but without breaking free the shackles that hold them back they will likely continue to make middle-of-the-road rock. Quality middle-of-the-road rock, but middle of the road nonetheless.

Wheel count = 19