WUSSY Cincinnati Ohio (Shake It) — Maybe it’s simple civic pride that inspired Wussy give their their latest album, their eighth full-length overall, a title that calls out their home city. Cincinnati Ohio feels like it makes more of a statement than that, though. Nearly twenty-five years into their career, the band is announcing their steadfast commitment to their roots. As so much of the music business infrastructure has moved on to trendier pop sounds, Wussy still wants to make thick, thumping rock ‘n’ roll. There’s no nostalgia play here. The dozen tracks across the album still have modernity to them, a sense of a band striving to making new wonders out of tried-and-true spells. “The Great Divide” reaches the epic scale of the War on Drugs, and “Sure as the Sun” crackles with the casual reinvention that is the space where Guided by Voices lives. “Please Kill Me” takes the R.E.M.-aping model of a bygone college radio age and puts a new sheen on it. Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker trade main vocals duties as if casting each song like a movie in miniature. They never err on who takes the lead. When, say, Walker’s intonations emerge on the drifty “Desperation AM,” the rightness of the choice is as sure and solid as a city skyline. Wussy makes the whole album feel like a home that no one wants to leave. Draw courage from the following cuts: “The Ghosts Keep Me Alive,” “Disaster About You,” “Inhaler,” and “The Night We Missed the Horror Show.”

ANDREW GABBARD Ramble & Rave On (Colemine/Karma Chief) — Cincinnati native Andrew Gabbard has put out enough of his own music over that checking references shouldn’t really be required. Even so, the numbers of ears tilted toward his solo records over the years have probably been significantly outnumbered by those who caught his leather-tough licks as the regular touring guitarist with the Black Keys, so it’s worth mentioning the company he keeps. Ramble & Rave On might be described as what the famed Akron, Ohio duo would deliver if their shared obsession moved on from vintage roadhouse blues and jumped ahead a couple decades to the transformational rock and pop of the nineteen-sixties. There’s a Dylan-esque chug to the title cut, and “Everywhere I Go I Don’t Belong” is like one of Brian Wilson’s luxurious laments. Like fellow sonic time travelers the Lemon Twigs, Gabbard largely stays rooted in one era. He is a little more prone to slip a couple concentric circles away, though, picking up a McCartney-in-the-seventies vibe on “Magic Taxi” or, on “Donna-Lou,” even sounding like Matthew Sweet when he let his pop switched from power to flower. The record is a pretty pure statement of the music Gabbard likes. Sven Kahns pitches in with pedal steel guitar on the grandly grimy “I’m Bound to Ride,” but otherwise it’s all Gabbard. He earns his place in the spotlight. There are more cuts worth raving about: the cover of Neil Young’s “Barstool Blues,” “All Right Mama,” and “Mulberry Rock.”