Westinghouse Atom Smasher, an experimental country band named after a disused nuclear accelerator currently lying by the roadside in Forest Hills, recently released their third album, an achingly beautiful work called Wish Signal. To commemorate the release, and an upcoming Government Center show on Wednesday, 3/25, guitarist/vocalist Jozef Kukula and Omnichordist/synthesist Oz Benhart answered a few questions. 

Pittsburgh Manifold: Who is/are Westinghouse Atom Smasher? A catchphrase or tagline, if you will.

Jozef Kukula: We’re an experimental country band. Relatively few experimental or country musicians would agree. Ambient Americana might be another way of thinking about it, but most along those lines have the good sense not to sing.

PM: How did you get your start as a band? 

JK: Early on, part of it was reading old issues of No Depression and wanting to write songs that felt like they belonged there. We’re interested in a lot of those bands (The Geraldine Fibbers, Scud Mountain Boys, Souled American–who might have actually coined “ambient Americana” in the mid-90s), but even more than that I’m interested in the way that magazine’s contributors rhapsodized about alt-country music. It’s as if they were always on the verge of a philosophical breakthrough related to the acoustic guitar. And I think that’s as ridiculous and unridiculous as it sounds.

One of our first shows was in the bell tower of an abandoned church in Wilkinsburg. There were holes in the floor wide enough to fall through. Some covered with plywood, some not. We played in front of a wall of stained glass windows. Some hanging on, others blown out to open air. There was a breeze.

PM: Your music strikes such an unusual balance between rustic Americana and glitchy electronica. How did this sound evolve? 

JK: I think after sitting in middle-of-nowhere silence for long enough, you hear other things. Good, bad, or (mostly) otherwise.

Oz Benhart: Our ability to make music that sounds as strange as those places feel requires getting into electronic sounds, noise, and so on.

PM: You recently released an album called Wish Signal. Who/what were some of your influences this time around? 

JK: This album has a lot to do with personal fantasy. If you and I could see the contents of each other’s hearts, what might that be like? I got a book of some harder-to-find poems by Federico Garcia Lorca while writing for Wish Signal. That directly influenced this record. Also Broadcast, Arthur Russell, Elizabeth Cotten.

OB: Thinking of Broadcast, hearing Maida Vale Sessions made me want to make unlikely-sounding live music. Like finding a library book where you can’t believe what you’re reading, what they’ve gotten away with, and maybe it’s so secret that you don’t even want to check the book out. You’re just sneaking a passage at a time. Also simulation, harp music, high towers.

PM: How would you compare/contrast Wish Signal with your previous work? 

OB: I think Wish Signal is the most beautiful and realized. I’ve grown a lot as a musician over the last five years, and we’ve developed a lot in terms of our chemistry as a group.

JK: I also think of the musicians playing on this record. Oz’s Omnichord defines more of Wish Signal. Sherry [Libertucci]’s approach to the bass has always been essential. Leah [McPhail]’s pedal steel counterpoints provide a lot of the emotional information. Then Al [Ebeling] arrived as this record began and changed the way we write and perform. Like flowers grow. And Dan [Grushecky] bookended with violin in a glove-in-reverse, fall-asleep-in-the-gondola sort of way.

PM: Is there a track on the album that you’re especially proud of? 

OB: I was glad we were able to feature the Omnichord on “Masquerade.”

JK: That’s the song on this record that most people like best. “No Other Place” is another good one.

PM: Who are some other Pittsburgh artists that you’ve been listening to?

JK: Forest Counties, Clear Creek SP, vireo, Horace Whisper (for more of Al on drums), Tyler Heaven (for more of Dan’s violin)

OB: Mariage Blanc, Sorryface, Valleyview, Sleep Experiments, Beach Boise, ID, Sherry CD-ROM (Sherry plays bass in WAS)

PM: Is there anything that I forgot to ask or that you’d like to let people know about you, your music, or anything in general?

OB: We’re working on our next record now.

JK: Working title, Pirouette.

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Featured Track: Tory Silver - “Microwave”

Anybody who’s ever worked in the service industry will identify with “Microwave,” the latest single from Tory Silver’s upcoming album, In Through the Front with Lasers, produced and engineered by Jay Som’s Melina Cortez Duterte, due out May 29th on Michi Tapes. The track pairs muddy, shambling guitars with vocals whose early-morning chipperness belies the exhaustion contained within Silver’s lyrics (“I’m not insured so I hope I don’t slip / System’s rigged and it just won’t quit / Hurt my back time and time again”), which were inspired by the empty drudgery of low-wage grocery store toil. The track finds a locus of quiet hope, though, in a significant other (“I just want to be strong enough to carry you all the way”); Silver begins by “kiss[ing] her bye” in the morning, and, as the song’s wry defiance implies, holds the sense memory on her lips as a charm against the coming hours of exploitation. Accompanying video by Michi Tapes’ Eric Stevens. 

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Upcoming Shows and News

On Sunday, 3/22, The Mr. Roboto Project will host an eclectically noisy evening featuring Montana digi-emo crushers Hey, ily!, Minnesota shoegazers malamiko, pop-punk rousers Tilt Contrls, ragged soul-barers Morning Dew (in solo form), and hate-hop rager VoidDweller (final three all local). Doors at 6, music at 7, $12 advance, $15 door, sober event. 

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Boston indie workhorses Pile, renowned for their clamorous live shows, are coming to Bottlerocket on Sunday, 3/29, for a show in support of their 2025 album Sunshine and Balance Beams. Local act Dizzier, who showcased their slowcore twang on Rot, Dead Car, one of our top 2025 albums, will be supporting. Doors at 7, music at 8, $20 advance, $25 door, all ages. 

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Local breakout Merce Lemon, whose Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild was one of 2024’s strongest records, signed with noted Brooklyn indie label Mexican Summer, home to Cate Le Bon, Devendra Banhart, Iceage, Jessica Pratt, L’Rain, Dungen and more. Lemon’s 27-stop national tour–a joint affair with Durham, NC alt-country band Fust–kicked off in Cleveland this week. 

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Starting this fall, Wylie Ave–the Lower Hill epicenter of Black music and culture devastated by the construction of the Civic Arena in the 1950s–will once again play home to a music venue. The 4,000-seat Citizens Live at the Wylie will open to the public in October, with hometown hero Wiz Khalifa scheduled to play the venue’s inaugural show on Friday, 10/2. The project is spearheaded by entertainment juggernaut Live Nation, who abruptly reached a settlement with the Trump Administration to settle an antitrust trial for $280MM. The National Independent Venue Association called the settlement “a failure of the justice system.” Evidence against Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster included private messages in which one executive called customers “so stupid.” The lawsuit continues with 36 states, including PA, leading the charge against Live Nation’s alleged monopoly.