Madison’s Heather Hussy and Bobby Hussy discuss branching out on their fourth album.
Madison duo The Hussy will celebrate their fourth full-length album, Galore, with a show This Friday at the High Noon Saloon. The live setup on Friday will be The Hussy’s first as a “full” band, augmenting drummer Heather Hussy and guitarist Bobby Hussy’s usual stripped-down approach with bass, additional guitar, lap steel and violin. (Next up is a July 15 show at the Shitty Barn in Spring Green.) And maybe that’s appropriate for marking the band’s most diverse and elaborately produced record yet: Galore finds both members branching out, with Bobby leading conversational, jangly (sorry, I’ve used the word “jangly” about five million times in discussing this record, but it does jangle in a way that’s surprising for this band) songs like “Not The Weed” and “Take You Up,” and Heather taking center stage on slow-mounting, vulnerable numbers like “Darkness” and “My Bad.”
The album shows how much both members have evolved since starting the band in 2008, especially as singers—with each Hussy release, both Heather and Bobby seem to put more and more emphasis on building strong vocal melodies, such that even the short, punk-rooted tracks (and there are still plenty) sound far removed from the snide call-and-response shouting of The Hussy’s early songs. The two joined me at WORT-FM studios to discuss how the band has developed over the years, and in the interview you can also hear some excerpts from the new album (also, the song “Turning On You” premiered on CMJ yesterday). Thanks to WORT’s Dylan Brogan for producing the segment. A shorter version aired this week on WORT’s In Our Backyard news show.
