About — wussy (the band)

About Wussy

Wussy are one of the most celebrated independent bands in the American Midwest, a group whose idiosyncratically thoughtful songs and atmospheric, forceful guitar attack have won them a fervent cult following and a growing stack of rave reviews. Built around the sweet and sour mix of vocalists Lisa Walker and Chuck Cleaver, Wussy came together in 2001 when the two singers and songwriters casually performed together at an event in their native Cincinnati, Ohio, and soon the duo expanded into a full band. In 2005, Wussy released their debut album, Funeral Dress, and while they toured and recorded at a casual pace, between excellent reviews and positive word of mouth, albums like 2009's Wussy, 2011's Strawberry, and 2014's Attica! found an audience as the band began to edge out of the indie rock underground towards the boundaries of mainstream recognition.

First Wussy lineup (L-R: Burman, Cleaver, Messerly, Walker) - Photo by Kevin Curtis

Wussy were formed by guitarist and singer Chuck Cleaver, who had enjoyed modest success in the '90s as a member of the Cincinnati-based band the Ass Ponys. After releasing the album Lohio in 2001, Cleaver decided to break up the band, believing he'd said all he had to say within their format. Not long after, Cleaver was asked to perform at a local music awards event, and he was nervous about appearing on stage alone; Lisa Walker, a fellow Cincinnati singer and songwriter, volunteered to perform with Cleaver, and they were pleased enough with the results that they continued working together. Adopting the name Wussy, Cleaver and Walker expanded the duo into a full band in 2002 with the addition of bassist Mark Messerly and drummer Dawn Burman. The group delivered its first album in 2005, Funeral Dress, which was released by Shake-It Records, an independent offshoot of a Cincinnati record shop. The celebrated rock critic Robert Christgau gave Funeral Dress an A rating in his column in The Village Voice, and became one of Wussy's most outspoken champions, in 2012 declaring "Wussy have been the best band in America since they released the first of their five superb albums in 2005."

Current Wussy lineup at BBC6, Salford, UK (L-R: Klug, Walker, Cleaver, Messerly, Erhardt) - Photo by BBC Staff

In 2009, around the time Wussy released their self-titled third album, Dawn Burman left the group, and Joe Klug became their new drummer. After the release of Strawberry in 2011, the group had become popular enough to stage short tours of the East Coast as well as playing regularly in the Midwest, and in 2012 they headed to the West Coast for the first time, as well as opening for the Afghan Whigs on their well-received reunion tour. (Whigs bassist John Curley also produced several albums for Wussy.) By this time, Wussy had grown into a quintet with former Ass Ponys guitarist John Erhardt joining in on pedal steel and keyboards. In 2014, Wussy released Attica!, their fifth studio album and one of their best-reviewed projects to date, which Christgau awarded a rare A+ rating, while Spin Magazine named it one of the 50 best albums of the year. It also became Wussy's first album to be released in the U.K., when Damnably picked it up for British distribution. In 2016, Wussy returned to action with the album Forever Sounds. For 2018's What Heaven Is Like, for the first time Wussy included two covers ("Aliens in Our Midst," originally recorded by the Twinkeyz, and "Oblivion," written by Kath Bloom) alongside eight fresh original songs. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Members

L-R: Klug, Walker, Messerly, Erhardt, Cleaver - Photo by Sean Hughes

Chuck Cleaver - vocals / guitar / etc
Lisa Walker - vocals / guitar / etc
Mark Messerly - bass / keys / etc
Joe Klug - drums / keys / etc
John Erhardt - pedal steel / guitar / etc

Past: Dawn Burman - drums

In the Press

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Rolling Stone (Four Stars): Imagine a Yo La Tengo too tight to get cute or far out, dispensing a Velvet Underground derivative, fluent enough to warm the erectile tissue of anyone with a thing for guitar drones.

Village Voice: The band sound is more Velvets than Burritos, yet country still. It’s as if they’ve reduced all of white Ohio to an articulated drone, unlocked a silo or warehouse of hummable tunes, and worked out the harmonies. - Robert Christgau (read more)

AllMusic Guide: 4/5 Wussy’s tales of the messy facts of real lives are moving, brave, and thoroughly believable, and the music possesses a rough beauty that’s coolly revelatory; this is a first-rate band doing first-rate work, and if you honestly care about American rock at its best, this is music you should get to know. (read more)

Pitchfork: 7.8 (of 10) Compact packages with maximum singability and staying power squeezed into minimal space.. (read more)

Robert Christgau: A+ In which the best band in America remains the best song band in America while passing the Sonic Youth consortium on the outside to become the best distorto-guitar band in America, and although the competition in both categories has thinned out, how many ever dared combine it? Television? Nirvana? The Thompson Couple? That is the territory here... (read more)

David Schmader, The Stranger: Cincinnati's Wussy is a rock band that'll remind you on the deepest level why you love rock bands. Fronted by former Ass Pony Chuck Cleaver and the previously unaffiliated Lisa Walker, Wussy's central conceit is to submerge pristine, literate songwriting in the rumble and roar of a full band. (read more)

Ann Powers, Slate Music Club Best of 2014: The ragged, majestic rock of the Cincinnati band Wussy.. has been crashing toward sublimity for nearly 15 years (and whose co-leader, Chuck Cleaver, led the amazing Ass Ponys for 12 years before that), and whose 2014 album Attica! proved that guitar rock about ordinary people can still be profound, even in our bold new age of soft technology. (read more)

Charles Taylor, LA Review of Books :Because they are fans, because this music has long been their chosen vehicle for expression, they test it to see if it can still provide a kind of transcendence, or at least a way of speaking that will make sense of the life around them.(read more)

Uncut : Recalling a roll call of adventurous boy/girl-styled indie bands – Yo La Tengo, Handsome Family, X – Wussy draws on plenty of yin/yang sexual and existential tension, a charmingly shambling, rough-hewn sound, and an army of alternately droning and jangling guitars on their sharpest outing yet. 4 stars

BBC :An unmistakable identity…this collection proves that Wussy are certainly a band with an incredibly rich past and, undoubtedly, an equally rich future.

NPR Song of the Day :Few bands since the Velvet-steeped heyday of the Feelies, Yo La Tengo and R.E.M. have abandoned themselves so completely to the ebbing, flowing currents of keening, droning guitars.

SPIN: Wussy is a weird and wonderful band with a capital B. Strawberry distills down the best parts of all the parties involved to make their first truly classic record, one that will be talked about at length this year and for many more to come.

New York Times: Mindful drone-rockers from Ohio are alternately terse and liquiform in all the right places.

PopMatters: A truly classic record, one that will be talked about at length this year and for many more to come.