featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
November 26, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Noise can be beautiful. Just ask Neil Diamond (see, he has a record called Beautiful Noise ...). Ask Centro-Matic. Ask the Breeders. Ask Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker. The pair have been creating beautiful noise as Wussy since the early aughts, concealing shared vocals and uncommonly smart lyrics beneath hypnotic guitars and layers of shoegaze buzz. For years, the pedal steel of John Erhardt was indispensable to that inspired racket, pairing with Cleaver as well in Ass Ponys during the 90s. When Erhardt passed away unexpectedly early in the pandemic, most of what would become Cincinnati Ohio was already written. While mortality has figured prominently in Wussy's work (see album titles such as Funeral Dress, Left For Dead, Rigor Mortis, etc), the new project seems a fitting tribute to the fallen bandmate.
The band's Facebook page introduces Wussy as sludgy turmoil + harmonies, and vaunted critic Robert Cristgau famously termed them the best band in America. Cincinnati Ohio lives up to those sobriquets, even as Wussy's once flinty heart has softened a smidge. Chuck Cleaver has called "Sure As the Sun" among his most optimistic lyrics: Sure as the sun / Believe in everyone / Until they prove themselves unworthy. Joe Klug's marching snare leads the procession, guiding John Hoffman's piping keys and a regiment of those stoic guitars. Cleaver rises above the fray with a declaration of solidarity: As my days of doing death-defying stunts come to an end / There hasn't been a minute that I haven't called you friend. The songwriters' barbed sense of humor is also at the ready, as on "Night We Missed the Horror Show", when Cleaver sings, It's not as though we never dared to dream / If dreaming were a job / We'd have been employee of the year.
During the pandemic, Cleaver and Walker took to the 'net with dozens of live pandemic streams. As much as the wall of guitars, the duo's vocal parry has served to define Wussy's sound. Like John Doe & Exene, they trade leads, but it's the friction generated when Cleaver and Walker sing in tandem that makes genuine sparks. Lisa Walker takes the lead on "Inhaler", with Mark Messerly's mine-deep bass laboring ominously beneath the track. Clouds clear for the chorus, however, as Cleaver and Walker overlap their individual lines. With Messerly on accordion, the voices weave on the acoustic "Disaster About You". Walker's voice has grown more honeyed over the years, alternately as sharp as Chrissy Hynde or as cool as Mimi Parker.
"Ghosts Keep Me Alive" is indicative of the band's commitment to melody over chaos on much of their new work: I'm afraid that all the best intentions don't add up to much / On a day / When you are caving in / And then by chance / You find I love you / Written in the dust. The late John Erhardt is featured on a pair of cuts, and continues to be mentioned among Wussy's current membership. Travis Talbert has assumed pedal steel duties on the majority of Cincinnati Ohio's sessions. On "Night We Missed the Horror Show", Erhardt's guitar chimes across the mix on one of the collection's more sensitive cuts.
"Great Divide" stands as the record's driving epic, a song writer Lisa Walker calls a study on the minutiae of loss. The piece also features Walker's most impressive delivery, cushioned in that beautiful wall of noise alongside Joy Division guitars: I don't know what to do with this old drive / It's got your initials sharpied on the side / I nearly called to ask you for a ride / I hear you still across the great divide. Paired with two Bandcamp EPs (Cellar Door and Great Divide), Cincinnati Ohio rages and soothes, marking the very welcome return of Wussy's beautiful noise following a six-year silence.
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