Consumer Guide Album

Wussy: Ghosts [Bandcamp, 2020]
Although it skips their grungy revamp of New Order's "Ceremony," this free 40-minute odds-and-sods should hold off a ravenously discerning fanbase still bummed that they'll be stuck in Cincinnati till humans brainier and nicer than our crowd-craving, crowd-punishing führer-in-his-own-mind have quelled a disease that transforms live singing into an infection vector. Not counting one you may have missed on the 2019 Chuck Cleaver solo album you also may have missed, it's all alternate mixes if not new material, and not one feels redundant--the quieter and more lyrical original of Left for Dead's "Mayflies" by Lisa Walker's Magic Words and an electro take on Strawberries's "Fly Fly Fly" are just two standouts. The flat-out stunner is the opener, where Walker makes you feel that the kind and willing woman who sings Dusty Springfield's indelible "Breakfast in Bed" is being exploited nevertheless. Only then there's the fondly recalled Chuck & Lisa closer "Mountain in My Backyard," where the sort of ordinary Midwesterners whose foibles Wussy have long excavated are remembered as everyday heroes. A