Chuck Cleaver says that when all the members of the Cincinnati band Wussy get together for what’s supposed to be two hours of practice, it ends up being an hour and 45 minutes of just shooting the shit, and then 15 of actual playing.So it also is with interviews.
At various points in their conversation with Stereogum, Cleaver and co-frontperson Lisa Walker muse – sometimes randomly and sometimes with good reason – on such topics as Jeremy Allen White’s upcoming Springsteen movie, the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, “Try Try Try” by Cannonball Adderley and/or the Buckinghams, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, nearly every major cast member of Cleaver’s favorite terrible film Hillbillies In A Haunted House, and the fact that, while Cleaver absolutely hates the Eagles and “Hotel California,” Walker likes that it was apparently influenced by Steely Dan’s approach to lyrics.During the phone interview, there are also two different TVs on “mute” in Walker’s house, streaming vintage crime shows, which also means occasional play-by-play.
When, on the band’s latest song, “Inhaler,” Walker sings, “Mannix is on – it’s a fight with an old friend/ You run your heart through the blades of a blender,” that’s an actual slice of life, as are the reference to BBC Radio 6 DJ Gideon Coe and the song’s dark but hopeful vein of sorrow.The track is from Wussy’s eighth album, Cincinnati Ohio (no comma), the band’s first since 2018’s What Heaven Is Like.
It’s also the first since the death of Wussy guitarist and pedal steel player John Erhardt and the first with new member Travis Talbert.Out on Shake It Records this Friday — but streaming in full here a day early — Cincinnati Ohio continues an implausibly perfect streak of Wussy music dating back to their 2005 debut Funeral Dress.
Originally formed by Cleaver (who was then still also fronting Ass Ponys) and Walker in 2001 to play a single song at a Cincinnati music ...