Whenever I tell anyone they should check out this Cincinnati band, they roll their eyes, or snicker, or say something like: "That's the worst name I've ever heard." Not sure about that. Chuck Cleaver's previous, equally excellent outfit, The Ass Ponys, gave Wussy a run for its money.
But as they like to say in the (dwindling) music industry: It's about the music, man. And the way Cleaver and his fellow guitarist and songwriter Lisa Walker (above, with drummer Dawn Burman) twined their keening voices together, X-style, over a two-guitar churn at Bourbon Rocks on Thursday made all the band's self-deprecating remarks and their not-so-inviting name seem immaterial. "Thanks for choosing us over Yo La Tengo," bass player Mark Messerly said. "I'm not sure we would have made the same choice." Walker and Cleaver are both smart, funny, shrewd songwriters, and they brilliantly nick the riff from the Undertones "Teenage Kicks" in "Funeral Dress," a great, roiling burst of indie existentialism that joyous at the very notion of being alive, "knowing that it won't ever come again." The band is on tour, but the closest they get to Philadelphia is Baltimore March 24 and Asbury Park March 25.
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