We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

GREATER MINDS LP

by The Wiggins

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $3 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 27 The Wiggins releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of worst sequel ever.., Hola DEA, SEA KING, 6 Underground, If I should fall from the grace of god, FAILED FAITHS (demo/trauma mix), Go Beyond the Rooster, No, and 19 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $12 USD or more (25% OFF)

     

  • Greater Minds LP Cassette(limited pressing!)
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Released by Miss Champagne
    www.misschampagnerecords.com

    Includes unlimited streaming of GREATER MINDS LP via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
2.
CROWD 02:12
3.
ANNIE 02:32
4.
IN THE LIGHT 02:38
5.
BURN ON 03:10
6.
EDEN 03:36
7.
OLD 03:08
8.
NO PROFIT 03:09
9.
10.
THE WARRIOR 01:48

about

Released by Miss Champagne!
buy it here for less(yes, Im greedy): www.misschampagnerecords.com

Greater Minds makes the top ten at the HP
Greater Minds
The Wiggins released Greater Minds a little too quietly a few months ago after nearly a year in virtual hiding. But this album of cranky trash-­rock, outsider ballads and acidic folk music run through sticky distortion, à la Konono No 1, stands out, way out from the crowd, as does the Wiggins on any of the irregular occasions he plays. He’s a great performer in the Cleveland way, with a distinctly anti­-rock charisma and similarly anti-­trend personal-style­­­ windbreaker and loose­-fits. No one around here sounds like the Wiggins. But in a wider context, the garbage­town auteurism of Greater Minds, wherein every little piece of blown-­out sound — from his unmistakeably nasal, end­-of­-the­-night voice to the minimalist drum­-machining and guitar-playing — has only one job and none are allowed to waste your time, recalls The Wiggins’ kinship with crank prodigies like BR Wallers of the Country Teasers/the Rebel, and Dan Melchior, as well as artistic forebears Billy Childish and Jonathan Richman. Just listen to “Annie,” track three; it’s as tightly­ wound as something by Wire, but slow and crumbling, like the interior of a house after a blaze, and then it ends abruptly with a strange Link Wray coda. Even his cover of Randy Newman’s “Burn On” is no longer Newman’s own, but broken in, lightly wrecked and hammered back into form. This is the Wiggins getting into the promised land, playing fast and slow, uncompromising, confident, but not fronting, both circumspect and blistering. TEX KERSCHEN
Link:
www.houstonpress.com/music/the-10-best-houston-releases-of-2016-so-far-8524819/2

Cool review from the super cool folks at RAISED BY GYPSIES!

When you've listened to and reviewed The Wiggins as much as I have you begin to hear the sound as being related only to The Wiggins even though it might apply to combinations of other artists. From psych garage pop to High Pop to the thundering bass lines of The White Stripes, The Wiggins bring forth a new set of songs that will blow your speakers and your mind-- and it's on cassette.

Though it can be extremely fuzzy there are still times when it sounds lo-fi, which is odd because you usually can either hear that static-hiss of being lo-fi or it gets drowned out by the fuzzy distortion. I'm not sure if I've ever heard the two together before, but of course, when you're loud and are meant to be played loud it can sometimes become something you can hear.

By Side B you will hear a slower, western-like punk ballad, which slows things down, but for the most part these songs are loud and somewhat fast paced. Still, it is hard for me to find compare with them since I tend to simply think of them as being The Wiggins, but I imagine it's a lot like what happened when artists like Hunx and Ty Segall first started releasing a lot of music.

Many times, it becomes easier to say you listen to an artist than remember what first got you into them. Maybe you heard them at a friends house or on a compilation or saw them open for your favorite band, but in this case I know The Wiggins simply through my love of searching Bandcamp with the tag "Houston". And I understand that you might not be as crazy and search Bandcamp as much as I do, but that's okay because now you can use this cassette as the first time you heard The Wiggins.

Through it all, as per usual, no one better sums up their music better than The Wiggins themselves. Sometimes I wonder why I review music when it can seemingly review itself. There are two lines which are somewhat tongue-in-cheek I'd say but they still can give you an idea of how this cassette will sound, maybe even better than anything I've typed here:

"I'm breaking all my bones
Like I'm breaking rock n roll
Hey Hey"
raisedbygypsies.blogspot.de/2016/04/cassette-review-wiggins-greater-minds-lp.html

and some nice word from space city rock!!

The Wiggins, Greater Minds

Jon Read may not have been born in the sweaty, swampy, dirty depths of Houston, Texas, but the city fits him like a (tattered, weird-smelling) glove. There’s just something about that raw, ripped-open, messy, muddy sound Read’s crafted over the course of his 15 years or so of his musical career as The Wiggins that brings to mind H-town’s true, unvarnished nature — we’re a goddamn muddy, mosquito-filled swamp, filled up with weirdos and creeps and corruption, and yet, there’s beauty buried in all of that muck and grime.
Greater Minds is the same kind of deal; it’s a dirty morass of sound, on the one hand, but on the other, it’s a sneaky, sneaky bunch of sweet-hearted blues-garage-pop tunes that have their own peculiar charms, buried though they might be.
The title track is a prime example: it’s raw and ragged and bassy, sounding like it’s being played through speakers shredded drunkenly with a knife, and reminiscent of The Kills’ early stuff at points (only with less sneering, self-conscious cool and more of a surly, streetwise snarl). With that, though, it sucks you in and forces you to listen, chugging along with a menacing bassline and smashed-up percussion and making it all work like the pieces of a very fucked-up machine; there’s a devious kind of magic going on that makes it hard to turn away.
Then there’s the slower, more bluesy “Crowd,” which is gritty and dirty, stomping and staggering along with a confidence that’s impossible to deny, but ever-so-subtly exposing a surprising undercurrent of melody deep, deep down in the noise. The same goes for “Annie,” driven along by a tapped bassline that lures you in to dance among the knives and needles.
Despite all my talk of Houston-ness, mind you, the closest comparison I can come up with is Louisianans Quintron and Miss Pussycat. That duo’s swamp-rock comes near to The Wiggins’ murky, scraped-up garage-noise-pop, especially on tracks like “Burn On” or “Eden,” the latter of which awesomely merges lo-fi electronics and an addictively melodic pop underbelly, or the trashcan stomp of “Watch the Trees Burn”.
Naturally, Read throws in some curve balls on Greater Minds, like “In the Light,” which mines a ska-sounding rhythm and great, great keyboards (and which is catchy as hell, to boot), or “No Profit,” which is quiet and somber, about as close to “minimal” or “clean” as The Wiggins ever gets; it’s truly a blues song, stripped of most of the noise and static, and I’d be willing to bet it serves as a pointer to Read’s own musical roots.
The album closes out with another of those curve balls (and maybe another of Read’s influences?), a seemingly sincere, slowed-down, jangly cover of Patty Smyth’s “The Warrior,” which in the hands of The Wiggins sounds so damn natural it took me a minute to realize what the hell I was listening to.
In a musical world that seems to get increasingly shiny and sleek day by day — yes, even right here in H-town — we desperately need more people like The Wiggins, to remind us that not all music has to be pretty to be good, to remind us that noise in itself can be amazing, and to remind us that sometimes just saying “fuck it” is the right way to go.
www.spacecityrock.com/2016/04/01/the-wiggins-greater-minds/

credits

released March 26, 2016

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

The Wiggins Houston, Texas

Jon Read is an artist and a musician. With his band, the Wiggins, he makes the kind of music that they’ll play on oldies stations fifty years from now after the plug gets pulled, the blood gets spilled, the power returns, and people get back to partying like they party right now. The Wiggins’ music is a loud, hissing mix of idiosyncratic garage and punk, and Blues..

- Tex Kershcen, Indian Jewelry
... more

contact / help

Contact The Wiggins

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like The Wiggins, you may also like: