Fri. June 22

Long time, no Wheat. hard to believe but it's been four years since we heard from this suburban Boston band. They went through the major label blues, and it's taken a while to shake loose, which they have with the succinctly titled CD, "Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square." The trio is now a duo - founding multi-instrumentalists Scott Levesque and Brendan Harvey, after guitarist Rick Brennan left. Wheat always drew from the great early '90s English shoegazining bands and here they mix po and noise, although they're quite capable of elegant chamber pop as well. Wheat re-appears at the Middle East Upstairs Friday June 22, with a delectable Ben + Vesper - a husband-wife team - appearing before them. Here's what Sufjan Stevens, who plays banjo, woodwinds and piano says: "In an eara heavy-laden with singleness (as the latest statistics boast), Ben + Vesper's beautiful, oddball musicology is a refreshing thesis for marriage without pandering to all the naive notions of matrimony. It's not a record of love on Hallmark's terms; instead, it's a vigilant scrutiny of the day to day experience of home and work: child-rearing, car mechanic, credit card, grade point average, and washing machine to name a few. In Ben + Vesper's songs, the standard domestic life begins to feel as grotesque as a Bukowski poem, just without all the profanities." Opening up the 9 p.m., $10 show is Scamper.

472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-492-4515 mideastclub.com