I generally seem to have a New Favorite Band all the time. The Stones are just my favorite band, but I have other people come in and out and as Mick Jagger put it, "steal my heart away," at least for a few months at a time. There's a bunch of them and some of them are still active today, and others are now defunct. These bands give me every bit as much pleasure and enjoyment as Bowie, Steely Dan or The Yardbirds, it's just that hardly anyone ever bothers to check them out. I could go on a rant about radio consolidation (someone disagreed with me on the state of music/radio and said it was shitty music, not smaller playlists and only playing the same old hits that killed that goose), but I'm not gonna get on about that. I'm just going to talk about my current New Favorite Band, Wussy.
First off, ya know what's cool? Wussy is from Ohio. There are a stunning amount of great musicians and bands in this state, I'll tell ya. We may have some lousy sports teams, but you never lose with good music, and we have that in spades. Wussy is from the other end of the state, down in Cincinnati and while I'm not thrilled with a lot of the southern part of my state for the most part, they hold up their end of the musical deal really well. I'll talk about some other bands I love from around there eventually, but for today, let's talk about how I started listening to Wussy.
Over at Rock Town Hall there's plenty of people that don't just lament that guys like Roger Daltrey or David Gilmour are old enough to be retired if they hadn't already not lived a life of leisure. The average Townsperson (what someone who participates there becomes) is well versed in the Classic Rock canon, the Punk/New Wave movement and most manage to continue to give a shit about what they can hear today from people they've never heard before. We don't always see that in internet forums these days, and that's why I like that blog. Anyway, one of the Townspeople that goes by Oats has mentioned Wussy a few times, and people have linked to Robert Christgau wearing a Wussy T shirt. Christgau has pretty uniformly loved all of Wussy's albums but even with a Townsperson and "The Dean of Rock (or whatever Christgau calls himself)" telling me that I need to check out Wussy, I pretty much figured I have a long enough wish list of things and besides, I can be funny about how I get around to listening to the recommendations of others.
I don't know why, but sometimes people will tell me to check something out, and I just won't. I go about finding music the ways I usually do, or I ignore one person and listen to another. I think maybe sometimes I may check something out that wasn't a specific recommendation, and if I'm not head over heels in love with it, I kind of hedge my bets. I'm not saying that's what happened here. I think Oats has generally pretty compatible tastes with me in a lot of areas, so I'd take his suggestions pretty readily. We disagree on some stuff, but I think it's more he doesn't like some of the noisier racket I like instead of me not liking things he likes. So why didn't I check out Wussy?
Maybe because I hate their name. Maybe I thought Chuck Cleaver didn't look Rock N' Roll enough? I don't know. Like I said, sometimes I'm just funny about how I decide what new things I'm going to listen to.I can be like a toddler, I guess. what I mean is if you've ever known a two year old, then you've heard, "No! I do it myself!" I suppose I should work on that.
I first saw Left for Dead at Music Saves after a Record Store Day. They had a few of them left over. The album cover is a robin's egg blue, and the artwork just looks kind of girly to me. Now, girly is fine with me, because there's a woman in the band and why shouldn't they recognize that? I like a lot of women musicians, but there are some that just don't resonate with me, like Kate Bush or Sarah McLachlan. There's people that I think have otherwise good taste in music that can get all caught up in that stuff, and with the cover of this album looking the way it does, I was leery. Sure, you can ask "Why don't you just YouTube them?" I don't because I just don't want to, that's why. So after a month or two past Record Store Day I'm noticing that the copies of Left for Dead have dwindled to exactly one. So if I want it on vinyl, I'm thinking it's time to get it or forget it. So I bought it.
When I got home and put it on, by the end of Killer Trees, I'm kicking myself for not having done this at least a year or two ago. These guys are right up my alley, the kind of thing i can listen to all day. When they're slow, like on the Chuck Cleaver opener Trail of Sadness, it takes me some time to appreciate it. I'm totally okay with that, because usually if I love a song right off the bat, I end up getting tired of it. When I need to spend time with something before it really clicks with me is when that song really gets under my skin. Most of Chuck's slow songs are like that to me, so he must really be doing something right. Trail of Sadness really lives up to its title, too. It's a really sad song and reminds me of a friend from a long time ago.
The whole thing isn't just a downer, though. I mean, Wussy can get pretty melancholy and really doesn't trade in happiness and bubblegum for the most part, but they aren't a bunch of depressing hacks, either. It takes until the second side, on Sun Giant Says Hey for a "stupid happy song" (as Jawbreaker might have put it). This song has everything that Wussy does well in it, though. Distorted guitars, Chuck Cleaver's wobbly voice and Lisa Walker's voice an unlikely seeming, but perfect sounding counterpoint. I'll tell ya, if you want to get me to like something, have two singers each singing something different at the same time. It confuses me, but I just think it's a great trick that always works on me.
This isn't just the Chuck Cleaver show. Lisa Walker actually probably sings more of the songs than Chuck on this record, and man, did she bring her "A" game. Rigor Mortis is great, and Lisa's phrasing is really cool. Jonah is a pretty great song about a couple "getting to know each other, in the back seat of your van" and I'm not sure if it's autobiographical or not, but it's the kind of memory that anyone should be able to share. My favorite two songs are Killer Trees and Melody Ranch. Both are a little more uptempo, with plenty of distorted guitars and weird lyrics by Lisa. I think when I got this album I played it every day for a month.
So, my record is in great shape as I bought it new. It's on baby blue vinyl and the record goes really nicely with the cover. Not everyone thinks of things like that, ya know? So often you get something like an orange album cover with a dark blue and yellow splatter vinyl, like they just said, "whatever color, just make it a color other than black." I like when people think about the whole thing. Mine would be even nicer if I hadn't dropped the cover when I was cleaning it in the kitchen and crumpled a corner. Oh well, it's still a really great record!
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