Wussy

In which Chuck Cleaver - Ass Ponys, you remember, they still play out around Cincinnati - joins unknown Lisa Walker, multi-instrumentalist Mark Messerly, and amateur drummer Dawn Burman for 11 three-minute songs, all about perfect, one after the other after the other. Small, but about perfect, with Walker handling the human detail and Cleaver tossing off metaphors - a sideshow horse, a shunt to drain the fear from his brain. It's an ideal partnership - vocally and lyrically, Walker grounds the old guy and he lifts her. 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. A

villagevoice.com
- Robert Christgau

4/5 Stars Wussy - "Funeral Dress"

Newcomer improves old-timer in songful, dissonant Ohio quartet
The guy sings high and pained, the gal mellow and forthright. Both have midwestern twangs. The guy sounds older, but the gal dominates. The music is post-Velvet Underground droney, but the contained guitar noise never comes off as urban because it flows too smoothly - there's not enough conflict or racket in it. Also, bands that indulge their noisy sides are never this tuneful, even when they try. The gal is Lisa Walker, an unknown who won't be. Her songs of love and existential displacement are delicate, proud, complex - try "Motorcycle," in which she itches to get out of town without a helmet. The guy is Chuck Cleaver of the Ohio band Ass Ponys. Always a little twisted, he thinks about such things as a human-brained horse and what kind of wrench fits a lead pipe cinch - try "Yellow Cotton Dress," in which he'll never clear the silverware she left behind. They're an unlikely seeming pair. They fit perfectly.
Download: "Bought It Again," "Crooked," "Airborne"
blender.com - Blender

A woozy melodic rush.
- Rolling Stone

A veritable sock in the gut...they hit you where it counts. - Harp

One of the most impressive albums in years... A kind of musical moonshine, a potent, intoxicating distillation in which high lonesome folk melodies and harmonies mesh beautifully with slash and burn punk guitar. - WNTI

Rolling Stone - 4 stars.
"Superb...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. Then pray that some day it gets out of Cincinnati." - Rolling Stone

Spin - 4 stars.
"Haunting and exalting..." - Spin

Magnet
"Alive with the gritty, imperfect glow and wry humor of coed combos X and the Mekons." - Magnet

No Depression
"Wussy continue to craft songs that mix deftly casual propulsion with the ache of life's fleeting inevitabilities." - No Depression

Ken Barnes, USA Today
"You can hear why critics like them and mass audiences won't, but sometimes (horrors) critics can be right." - USA Today