Review / 200 Words Or Less
The Hussy
The Volar EP

The Hussy keeps changing on me. That’s cool, though. Bands are like babies: they grow and change and…eventually abandon you in the old folks’ home. Er, whatever. The point is that over the Wisconsin duo’s lifetime they’ve shifted from abrasive noisy garage-punk to more melodic but tonally challenging garage-punk, which comes across really well here, where they take those fuzzed up noisy elements they’ve been toying with and smoothly work them into a garage foundation. It’s short, fuzzy, and catchy, but also unpredictable. Four songs, five minutes, some serious jams that keeping the needle resetting instead of swapping out the record for something else. Just what you want in a 7”.

“Be My Girl” has a fuzzy backdrop that lives in Bobby’s grooving guitars and swaying vocals as it’s pepped up by Heather’s drumming and the call and response chorus. Then they bring it down a notch on the softer “Eventually,” which is melodic and abandons that call and response style that defined their early work.

Bobby leads the vocals on Side A, Heather takes Side B.

“Appleseeds” is more of a pop structure with chord-driven guitar and an earworm angle. Then “Drum Roll Song” finishes it out a punkier element where Heather’s soaring delivery drives the song instead of the swaying rhythms.

The EP, as a whole, is diverse in structure but clearly the same band throughout. Consistent and bringing the rawk, the directly titled Volar EP is stylistically varied and always growing up, but is always unmistakably The Hussy.