MUSIC|MEDIA|DESIGN

We can’t resist noting when a local artist or band does good in the World Outside.  Spin and Rolling Stone reviews are pretty rare for Cincy bands on small labels.  But not for Wussy! 

Wussy, ‘Wussy’ (Shake It) | Spin Magazine Online.

In a rare display of promotional virtuosity, local powerhouse Shake It Records has scored a home run with Wussy’s 2006 sophomore release, Left for Dead.

Over the course of the fall of that year the band became the darlings of the Usual Suspects:

First, Cincinnati’s CityBeat dropped a long article for the record’s release party.

Next, Rolling Stone featured a review by Robert Christgau in the same month that Spin’s Steve Kandell issued a strong 4/5 stars.  Even alt-weeklies in other towns got in on the action without supporting tour dates, like The Boston Phoenix  piece here.

I knew this was a good record while we were working on it, but I didn’t expect all this.  Someone’s doing something right at Shake It!  Way to go!

-d-

If I ever have a hard time remembering why I get up each morning, I hope I remember to check out this review of Ass Ponys The Okra Years in the  music blog PopMatters.com.

Okra Years was a special release by Shake It records compiling tracks from two older records from the band’s pre-A&M years, Mr. Superlove and Grim.  Consider this post a confession.  I consider the PopMatters review absolution.

A lot of records made locally in the late 80s and early 90s suffered in the mastering stage.  In fact, I was among a group of engineers insisting no mastering whatsoever was superior to the mastering available to us locally.  I’m not sure whether those 2 Ass Pony’s records were mastered by one of the local practicioners, but both testify to my position.  Like many records of the day, both sounded worse than the mixes actually were.  This problem is what led me into mastering in the first place.  The first decade of my career was spent lovingly revisiting many older records where the ball was dropped at the mastering stage.  Okra Years was one of the last significant records to get the full meggila.

I can only beam when I read this review.  It explains what we did, and why we did it better than anyone other than Chuck Cleaver could manage.  It’s always fun to make something great sound right, but much more fun when someone else notices.

Some other notices:

Harp Magazine noted that “the resequencing and omitted tracks do improve the flow, and only hard-core fans really will mourn the missing (no “Ford Maddox Ford,” guys?) and lament the changed—all while they exalt the extras. So the awful truth is that The Okra Years is a misleadingly billed but worthy do-over.”

BlogCritic Magazine says “The Okra Years is among the finest Alternative Rock releases of 2006. Not only is the music brilliant, but Cleaver’s assemblage of songs is tremendously satisfying, creating a roller-coaster ride of chilling, brooding pieces that allow the listener to tumble into the psychotic aspects of relationships, and then speed things up to ascend peaks of wry, eccentric humor.”

A couple good fan reviews in Amazon with a link to buy.

Thank God for CityBeat!  Without them, one of Cincy’s most unique and interesting bands would be criminally under-exposed.  Thanks to the alt-weekly’s coverage, natives were introduced to Culture Queer’s 2006 Super-Size It Under Pontius Pilate.  It only went on to win the annual Cincinnati Entertainment Award for Album of the Year!  Yeah, it’s that good.

But in the outside world, you’d never know the earth moved.  We were able to find this album review in Smother Magazine.  Indie music blog PopMatters managed to drop this dismissive short-take.  Not good enough.  This band deserves much more!