The Wheel Workers bring head music back down to earth on ‘One More Thing To Say’
Psych rock has always felt a little like sci-fi to me. At its best, both build a world first, then quietly use that world to get you thinking about something much bigger.
That might explain why about 30 seconds into The Wheel Workers’ ‘One More Thing To Say’, my brain has already put me in a giant field somewhere. Woodstock, inexplicably. Open sky, guitars floating off into the distance, anything possible.
Then, around the 40-second mark, the scenery changes.
The bassline starts pulling everything somewhere darker, guitars ring out and crash back in, synths drift around the margins and Steven Higginbotham’s vocals sit beneath a slight haze of reverb. Suddenly you’re not just wandering around the field anymore. You’re firmly in head-music territory.
I love psych rock that trusts you enough to let the song wander, and The Wheel Workers do exactly that. But crucially, there is still plenty of rock in the psych rock.
There are early Pink Floyd sensibilities in the atmosphere and slightly sinister textures, but this feels less art-school psychedelia and more working-band psych. There is a definite working man underneath the weirdness.
In a current international psych scene stretching from heavy and spacey to increasingly experimental and progressive corners, The Wheel Workers sit comfortably at the cerebral, guitar-driven end of things.
Call it intelligent psych rock – because that’s what it is.
The arrangement shifts and stretches, the odd-metered bassline keeps your brain occupied, and the lyrics give all that atmosphere something substantial to carry.
That makes more sense once you know the strange history of the track.
The Wheel Workers began ‘One More Thing To Say’ with their original lineup before breaking up in the mid-2000s. Two decades later, Higginbotham returned to the recordings, partially re-recording them and finally completing what had become the band’s great unfinished album.
You can hear both eras in the song: the younger band’s urge to push outward and another 20 years of experience knowing when to pull things back.
The lyrics have travelled through time less comfortably.
Written against the backdrop of the Bush era and Iraq War, ‘One More Thing To Say’ takes aim at powerful people making decisions about war while somebody else lives, or dies, with the consequences.
Twenty years later, that world unfortunately requires very little rebuilding.
The video, created by T Lavois Thiebaud and starring Ruben Ramires, takes the idea further with fluid animation, political imagery and increasingly mind-melting turns.
But by the end, I’m back at that sci-fi comparison.
The best psych rock builds somewhere strange enough to disappear into, then sends you home thinking about the real world.
The Wheel Workers manage both.
With One More Thing To Say due in October 2026, The Wheel Workers are keeping things moving with shows at Houston’s Black Magic Social Club on August 15 and Austin’s Valhalla on August 29.
Catch them live if you’re in Texas, and watch the wonderfully mind-melting video for ‘One More Thing To Say’ when it lands here.
