The Return of Wussy: “We’re Trying to Be Professional and Stuff”

A chat with Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker on the occasion of their first LP in six years

Hillbillies in a haunted house: Wussy (Photo by Jon Calderas and Lisa Walker)

Wussy have that vaunted cult status where critics with very limited audiences call them things like the best band in America and outlets with much bigger ones quote them. Or yesterday’s adulatory tweak from Jason Cohen in Stereogum: “They are either one of your very favorite bands or you just haven’t heard them yet.” I concur; one of my three tattoos to date is a Wussy lyric from 2005’s “Crooked,” one of the greatest songs from one of the greatest albums, Funeral Dress, of which the descriptor “perfect” comes up short. R.E.M. and Crazy Horse and Lucinda Williams all come to mind from its droning beauty, but the he-said/she-said intensity of Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker’s tag-team vocals recalled a punker precedent like X or Mekons. No one writes weird shit like “Humanbrained Horse” quite like Chuck, and few people can lock onto a phrase like “I found a bullet while you were finding God” like Lisa. In some ways, the much-younger, universally-acclaimed Asheville rockers Wednesday are running down paths Wussy cleared.

But aside from splitting the difference between kindred spirits like Drive-By Truckers and Yo La Tengo, Wussy was an odd fit for canons of the 2000s — their biggest fan, Robert Christgau, stuck them right between Lil Wayne and Kanye West in his top five favorite albums of the decade. They continued making wry, funny, heartbreaking roots-rock for weirdos well into the next decade until 2014’s Attica! started earning them coverage in more outlets like Pitchfork and SPIN because fanatics wouldn’t shut up (and because “Teenage Wasteland” is a stargazing rock epic that any music lover can feel). Not bad for a bunch of Cincinnati country-grunge-jangle-gaze blue collars whose record label is just the local record shop.

Until today, though, the band hadn’t released a new studio album since 2018’s What Heaven Is Like. And in 2020, their pedal-steel miracle worker John Erhardt (also of Chuck’s previous band Ass Ponys) passed, a tragedy that contributes liberally to the mournful tone of the new album and its less earthbound, unusually reverb-heavy production. They called it Cincinnati Ohio, because what the fuck else were they gonna do? It’s out today along with two EPs: Great Divide from the band proper, and Cellar Door, credited to Wussy Duo, which is kind of like their Parkay Quarts.

I’m friends with the band, opened for them once, and owe them royalties. But I also dropped the ball. Chuck and Lisa spoke to RIOTRIOT from the road via phone back in May, originally to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Attica! but as you’ll see, they’re quite good at deviating from that. Not much was yet revealed about the new album at the time, but read on and you will learn everything there is to know about “Teenage Wasteland.” And Hillbillys in a Haunted House.

Hey, how's it going?

Chuck: It's sunny, the sky is full of Simpsons clouds.

The Simpsons clouds are the good ones. Did you celebrate the 10th anniversary of Attica! this year?

Chuck: No. Josie and I have no idea how long we've been married. We know when we got married, because we got married on my birthday. Josie and I have been married somewhere between nine and 12 years, but I'm just not sure what. So I wouldn't have known.