“[Cubillos] was recommended to me by a friend who had a good experience,” says TRUSS singer Hannah Crandall via phone. TRUSS plays a release party at 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 21, at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights. The Rosies and CHERRY! open. “With our first record, we were still a bit newer to the scene and weren’t as established locally as we are now. We released Reset My Head and didn’t seek out much press, other than talking to a few local outlets. We didn’t know any better. With this album, we’re a totally different band and we have learned so much since our first record. About two weeks ago, we called [Cubillos] up, and we formed a plan. He listened and really liked our material. He gave us some great feedback and ultimately picked it up.”
The group originally formed in 2018 while members were students at the Ohio State University. The group played various college clubs, events and parties in the region. In 2019, it took a leap forward and released the single “Mayhem,” which it recorded with friend Cooper Towns who was taking a music production class at Ohio State and needed a final project. To date, “Mayhem” has amassed nearly 700,000 streams across various platforms.
After members graduated from college, the band relocated to Cleveland. It performed its first major show after returning to town in June of 2021, opening for the ’90s alternative rock band Sponge. Later that same year, TRUSS supported national acts Puddle of Mudd, Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss and all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band Lez Zeppelin. In 2023, the group released its self-produced debut album, Reset My Head.
In the last year, however, the band experienced a significant change and has trimmed down to a three-piece.
“We function now as a three piece, but we have a fourth member join on bass for live performances,” says Crandall. “They’re basically a hired gun. We have a couple of guys who play with us here and there. In terms of writing, [guitarist] Eric [Kennedy] is primarily a bassist, that was the role he was initially in when we all started playing together. He writes our bass parts and records them too. With the three of us, there are less cooks in the kitchen and it has been a really good experience operating like this.”
As a result of the new configuration, the band’s sound has shifted too.
“We put a lot of production sprinkles into this record, so to speak, and there are cool nuances and effects throughout the record,” Crandall says. “The songwriting is very different from our first record, and we are all very proud of this. We are so excited for it to get into the world. Genre-wise, there is something for everyone, and we’re excited to see which songs people flock to most.”
Crandall says the songs on the band’s previous full-length had a similar feel to them, but the tunes on Fluorescence have branched out into different musical directions. The group released the single “Selfish” at the back end of last year.
“It’s like 2005 or 2007 Paramore,” says Crandall when asked about “Selfish.” “We love rock music from the ’90s and 2000s that have that nostalgia element to us now. That’s the music we grew up with. We wanted our songs to elicit a similar feeling. There are songs that have that pop-punk sound and other ones inspired by ’90s grunge and nu-metal. Regarding our writing process, sometimes Eric [Kennedy] will have a riff and we build off that, or I hum a melody and take it to the boys. Holden is usually heavily involved in producing the songs and challenging us to add elements we might not have otherwise tried. It’s pieced together like a puzzle. With the songwriting on this record, we intentionally tried to cover a lot of ground. There is something for everyone.”
A rough 2024 also played a role in the themes that emerge on the album.
“Personally, 2024 was a really tough year,” says Crandall. “Because we put this record together throughout the year, it thematically follows a lot of the things I was going through. There is a different topic for every song. We have ‘Soiled,’ which is your classic relationship gone wrong song, and we have songs like ‘Heavy (Said I Needed Time)’ about grief, or ‘Tell me Something,’ which discusses feeling directionless as an adult in the world and so forth.”
The group didn’t have to go far to cut the album. The second floor of Crandall’s house is a music studio, and the group self-produces everything. Kennedy actually left the corporate world about a year ago and is pursuing music and sound engineering.
“He spent countless hours on this record and put so much love into the songs, and I got to watch him do it first hand,” says Crandall. “I could see the magic. From start to finish, it is amazing. We are DIY to the fullest extent.”
The new single, “Numb,” features heavy guitars but retains a pop sensibility as Crandall delivers her Pat Benatar-like vocals.
“I wrote it when I was getting really frustrated with everything,” says Crandall of the tune. “At the time, I was caught between people’s expectations of what they thought I should do vs what I wanted to do. I felt like I was dealing with an existential crisis, and writing ‘Numb’ was my outlet and way of sorting through things.”
The group has been active in Cleveland for a few years now. So what has it been like to try to make a name for the band here?
“We originally were a Columbus-based band,” Crandall says. “Poor timing, we moved to Cleveland during the pandemic. It was a weird transition. We thought we would come to Cleveland and start running, but we didn’t start playing around town until later in 2021. Even then, we didn’t play many gigs. The scene is really inclusive in Cleveland. It’s been a warm welcome. We’ve played big stages with national acts and we’ve played events like Taste of Tremont and other similar things. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you play. Cleveland is really welcoming to live music.”
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This article appears in May 22 – Jun 4, 2025.
