wussy – Underground Bee

March 17, 2016

Wussy at the Red Line Tap

The great Cincinnati rock band Wussy has a new album out, Forever Sounds — an outstanding follow-up to its 2014 album Attica! — and the group returned last week to its usual Chicago venue, the Red Line Tape, for two shows. I was there on Saturday, March 12, and it was another loose and lively set by Wussy, with old and new songs — even including one song that’s newer than the new album (“In the Tall Weeds”). Watch for details of another Chicago concert by Wussy (apparently at a different venue) coming up in late June. And you can see video of Wussy’s KEXP performance this week here.

SET LIST: Little Paper Birds / She’s Killed Hundreds / Gone / Maglite / To the Lightning / Hello I’m a Ghost / Pizza King / Better Days / Teenage Wasteland / In the Tall Weeds / Pulverized / Sidewalk / Aliens in Our Midst (originally by The Twinkeyz) / Dropping Houses / Beautiful ENCORE: Majestic-12 / Ceremony / Rigor Mortis

August 17, 2015

Wussy at Glenwood Avenue Arts Fest

Continuing its tradition of playing Chicago gigs that you might overlook if you’re not paying attention, Wussy performed Saturday, Aug. 15, at the free Glenwood Avenue Arts Fest. The Cincinnati band offered a preview of its upcoming album, playing several new songs along with past favorites.

December 30, 2014December 30, 2014

Favorite Records of 2014

Over the past year, these are the 2014 albums I’ve enjoyed the most. (And here’s a Spotify playlist with some of my favorite songs.)

1. Wussy: Attica!

Among the many terrific things about this terrific album are the words, memorable little nuggets of real life, lyrics that pull off that trick of feeling poetic without seeming to try too hard at achieving the effect. The first song, “Teenage Wasteland,” seems to be an ode to the joy of listening to rock music — in particular, that classic-rock radio standard by the Who, “Baba O’Riley.” And it deserves a spot on the list of best opening lyrics for an album:

Do you remember the moment you finally did something about it?
When the kick of the drum lined up with the beat of your heart
Stuck in the corn with only a transistor radio
Making paths with the sound waves and echoes in old Baba O oh oh…

Of course, Wussy is considerably less famous than the Who, but this little band-that-could from Cincinnati has made yet another record filled with rock songs that stand up alongside the classic stuff. Wussy is one of those groups with two lead singers, and the way Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker switch off on lead vocals is a big part of Wussy’s chemistry.

Thanks in part to the championing of legendary critic Robert Christgau, who has called Wussy “the best band in America,” the group has been getting a bit more of the attention it deserves, including a recent appearance on the CBS This Morning. I chuckled at the way CBS described Wussy: “Despite a record deal, a dedicated following and critical praise, members of the band Wussy haven’t been able to leave their day jobs.” As if that’s anything unusual! (See many of the other musicians on this list.)
wussy.org
wussy.bandcamp.com/album/attica

2. Laura Cantrell: No Way There From Here

It has been a strong year for female singers — five of them occupy spots on my top 10 list, or 5 1/2 if you count Wussy — but Laura Cantrell’s wonderful collection of old-fashioned country and folk-rock songs went largely unnoticed. Cantrell is a low-key performer, singing her lovely melodies without any grand flourishes. That’s part of what makes her songs such perfect gems.
lauracantrell.com
redeyeusa.com

3. Ultimate Painting: self-titled

The key reference points on this album are the Feelies and, of course, the seminal band that influenced the Feelies and countless other bands, the Velvet Underground. That formula is well-worn but far from worn out, as this delightful record demonstrates. Released by the dependable Chicago label Trouble in Mind, it’s the debut of a London group comprising James Hoare of the band Veronica Falls and Jack Cooper of Mazes (the British group, not to be confused with the Chicago group of the same name). The bones of Ultimate Painting’s songs are bare in these recordings, which almost sound like unadorned demos — the best sort of demos, the kind that reveal all the strengths and structure of a song. These tunes don’t need anything more.
ultimatepainting.tumblr.com
troubleinmindrecs.com

4. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: Give the People What They Want

Jones has made several great albums of authentically retro soul music since the Daptone label rescued her from a career of obscurity, and this is one of her best. The presence of backup vocals by the Dapettes and the varied, colorful arrangements give the music an added urgency. Jones finished making this record just before she was diagnosed with breast cancer; she successfully battled the disease and hit the road this year for a tour (including a triumphant show April 11 at the Vic), sounding as strong and vibrant as she ever has.
sharonjonesandthedapkings.com
daptonerecords.com

5. John Luther Adams/Seattle Symphony Orchestra: Become Ocean

First off, let’s stipulate that this recording can’t capture the full effect of hearing and seeing Become Ocean performed live — something I haven’t been lucky enough to experience. Adams, a composer who lives near Fairbanks, Alaska, writes music that evokes the natural world. And he designed Become Ocean to be performed by an orchestra spatially divided into three ensembles. Each of these groups plays slowly changing chords at its own pace. But even experienced through the two channels of a stereo recording (I haven’t heard the DVD 5.1 surround mix), it’s a beautiful and remarkable piece of music. Adams took the title from a poem that John Cage wrote about the music of Lou Harrison: “Listening to it, we become ocean.” That’s an apt description of Adams’ amorphous and oddly compelling music.
johnlutheradams.com
cantaloupemusic.com

6. Lydia Loveless: Somewhere Else

This young singer-songwriter from Columbus, Ohio, belts out her smart, catchy alt-country songs with impressive strength, packing them with yearning and spunk. And her band kicks ass. Among the many excellent tracks on this album, “Verlaine Shot Rimbaud” — a twangy Americana tune about 19th-century French poets — was my favorite song of 2014.
lydialoveless.com
bloodshotrecords.com

7. Protomartyr: Under Color of Official Right

Joe Casey, the frontman of this Detroit group, typically performs in a professorial jacket, intoning his lyrics like a half-inebriated poet. The brooding strength of that voice comes through on record, too. Using the basic tools of a standard rock band — guitar, bass and drums — Protomartyr makes intense post-punk with unusual, distinctive sonic touches, especially those otherworldly guitar lines.
protomartyr.bandcamp.com/releases

8. Twin Peaks: Wild Onion

This youthful band from Chicago writes garage-rock tunes with a touch of 1970s glam, cheerfully bashing out catchy riffs and singing with what sounds like a bit of a punk sneer. This debut album isn’t quite as lo-fi as Twin Peaks’ earlier EP, but it still has the highly compressed tones of music actually recorded in someone’s garage. Thank goodness.
music.twinpeaksdudes.com

9. St. Vincent: self-titled

Annie Clark, who performs under the name St. Vincent, is an amazing talent: a highly inventive songwriter; a musician who makes daring and unusual production choices; a live performer with the flair of an actress and a dancer; and a guitarist capable of blazing solos. Other than the visual spectacle of her live shows, all of that comes through in brilliant color on her self-titled album.
ilovestvincent.com

10. Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire For No Witness

On her latest record, the former Chicagoan gets more comfortable playing with her band, making music that defies genre labels. But her stunning voice is still at the center of the music — a preternatural force that conveys deep emotion even in the moments when it seems calm and placid on the surface.
angelolsen.com
jagjaguwar.com

Runners-up

With more listens, many of these records might have ended up in my top 10. And I heard another 100 or so albums that I liked — if only I’d had enough to give them more than a spin or two. These are in roughly descending order:

Chad VanGaalen: Shrink Dust
Andrew Bird: Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of…
Tweedy: Sukierae
Gord Downie & the Sadies: The Conquering Sun
Bob Mould: Beauty & Ruin
Reigning Sound: Shattered
Cousins: The Halls of Wickwire
Bry Webb: Free Will
Swans: To Be Kind
Ty Segall: Manipulator
Nude Beach: 77
Woods: With Light and With Love
Neneh Cherry: Blank Project
Sturgill Simpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
Luluc: Passerby
Thee Oh Sees: Drop
Ausmuteants: Order of Operation
Sharon Van Etten: Are We There
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra: Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything
Jennifer Castle: Pink City
The Skygreen Leopards: Family Crimes
Richard Thompson: Acoustic Classics
Marianne Faithfull: Give My Love to London
Matt Kivel: Days of Being Wild
Meatbodies: Meatbodies
Mozes & the Firstborn: Mozes & the Firstborn
Outrageous Cherry: Digital Age
Ex Hex: Rips
Spoon: They Want My Soul
Beck: Morning Phase
Lykke Li: I Never Learn
Kasai Allstars: Beware the Fetish
OOIOO: Gamel
Pink Mountaintops: Get Back
The Soft Walls: No Time
The People’s Temple: Musical Garden
Carsick Cars: 3
White Fence: For The Recently Found Innocent
Lucinda Williams: Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
My Brightest Diamond: This Is My Hand
Steve Dawson’s Funeral Bonsai Wedding
Jack White: Lazaretto
New Pornographers: Brill Bruisers
Damon Albarn: Everyday Robots
Jon Langford: Here Be Monsters
Greg Ashley: Another Generation of Slaves
John Wesley Coleman: Love That You Own
The Haden Triplets: The Haden Triplets
Paperhead: Africa Avenue
Tony Allen: Film of Life
Musee Mecanique: From Shores of Sleep
Hookworms: The Hum
Krakatau: Water Near a Bridge

Records I discovered in 2014

Honorable mention goes to a few records from previous years that I discovered in 2014. If these qualified as 2014 releases, they’d have a strong shot at my top 10:

Dog Trumpet: Medicated Spirits
Courtney Barnett: The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas
Jambinai: Difference
Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by Leroy Bach Featuring Angel Olsen

June 15, 2014

Wussy at Red Line Tap

The Cincinnati rock band Wussy is fairly obscure in the grand scheme of the music business, but people who know this group tend to love it. Wussy finally began getting some overdue attention in 2012 when one of rock’s best-known critics, Robert Christgau, wrote an essay calling Wussy “the best band in America.” The group got similar praise last month in the Los Angeles Review of Books from Charles Taylor, who observed: “If Wussy announce themselves at all, it’s not as stars or oracles but simply as five people who have hit on the perfect form in which to say whatever they have to say.”

The last time Wussy released an album, 2011’s Strawberry, barely anyone seemed to notice. Maybe that’s because Wussy’s records come out on Shake It, a tiny label run by a record store in Cincinnati. Now, the group has released yet another outstanding record, Attica!, but this one actually managed to get reviews in Pitchfork and Spin.

The group made a welcome return to Chicago on Friday night, playing at the Red Line Tap in Edgewater — a somewhat obscure venue. (Other than opening for the Afghan Whigs, the last time Wussy played in Chicago was at the Bucktown Arts Fest in 2012.) But while Wussy surely deserves to be playing in bigger rooms with bigger audiences, it’s a treat for those of us in the know to watch this wonderful outfit of Ohio musicians performing in a little bar like this.

Attica! is one of the year’s best albums, and it ranks alongside Wussy’s strongest previous records. Fittingly, the band started its set on Friday night with the first three songs on Attica! and proceeded to play a bunch of songs from the new record, as well as older favorites like “Pulverized,” “Muscle Cars,” “Maglite” and “Yellow Cotton Dress.”

A long pause came right after Wussy played the first song, “Teenage Wasteland,” when the part on singer Lisa Walker’s guitar that holds on the strap broke. The band’s other singer-songwriter-guitarist, Chuck Cleaver, tried to fix it, but they eventually gave up and she switched to a different guitar. This sort of lull can kill a concert’s momentum, but with Wussy, it felt more like a charming interlude. Walker was in a talkative mood, and after a while, Cleaver cracked that Wussy should attempt something novel: playing two or three songs in a row.

Walker said someone had compared Wussy to a jazz band, explaining that the group never plays a song the same way twice, and she wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment. There is indeed something loose about the way Wussy plays its songs. It doesn’t go too far off-script from the studio versions, but the live versions still have some of the excitement of musicians discovering the joy of playing a great song they’ve just learned. And when it comes down to it, Wussy’s great because it has striking lyrics and damn good melodies. What more do you really need?

August 26, 2012

Wussy at Bucktown Arts Fest

Is Wussy “the best band in America,” as the “Dean of Rock Critics,” Robert Christgau, recently proclaimed? Well, not quite, in my opinion. But Wussy is a pretty terrific band, with a string of four great records since 2005 (or five, if you count a limited-edition acoustic record). And this is exactly the sort of band that deserves some hyperbolic praise from a famous rock critic. So if Robert Christgau wants to kick the rest of the world in the pants for not paying attention to a little Cincinnati band he loves, who can blame him?

Wussy’s been flying under most people’s radar for the past seven years. Their excellent 2011 record, Strawberry, was barely noticed by critics and music websites. Wussy has played in Chicago a few times, but the gigs have always been low-profile and low-publicity. I’d never seen Wussy (though I did see the Ass Ponys, a previous band featuring Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver, once at Lounge Ax), and I was starting to wonder when I’d ever get a chance. After Strawberry came out, the band failed to make a Chicago appearance in 2011. And then most of 2012 passed by without a gig here. Finally… the Wussy website listed an Aug. 25 show at the Bucktown Arts Fest. This is not one of Chicago’s more prominent street festivals, but hey, at least Wussy was finally coming to my city. Like previous Wussy shows here, this one happened without much publicity, though Chicagoist ran a nice preview.

And so it was that Wussy at last took the stage Saturday afternoon, in front of a small bunch of appreciative fans as well as a bunch of festivalgoers who probably had no idea who they were. Such is the nature of small street festivals. Who knows what all of the bystanders thought, but the hard-core fans seemed to love it. Playing songs stretching from the first Wussy album up to the most recent, the band captured that loose and occasionally ragged spirit that makes its records sound so real. Cleaver and the band’s other singer-guitarist, Lisa Walker, were in good spirits, with self-deprecating jokes. After audience members shouted out some requests, they departed from their set list to give the fans what they wanted. Thanks, Wussy.

Wussy’s coming back to Chicago in October, but this time, the band will be opening for the Afghan Whigs at Metro. Later, they’re playing some dates elsewhere in the U.S. as the opening act for Heartless Bastards. I’m hoping they win some new fans in the process. In the meantime, all of Wussy’s records are streaming and available for sale at the band’s Bandcamp page. You can also buy these records from Wussy’s local Cincinnati label, Shake It Records.