YOUNG WIDOWS – settle down city

(CD, Jade Tree)

Some people still say that Jesus Lizard were the best noise rock band ever. A lot of those people would even claim that Jesus Lizard were the best band ever, but that laurel undoubtedly goes to the Melvins, whatever else happens. I was always sure that Jesus Lizard are one of the best bands there ever were, but thanks to Duane Denison’s genius guitar licks they were basically a blues band. A nitro-fuelled, high on narcotics, psychotic and crazy blues band, but still a blues band deep somewhere in their core. What’s all that talk about Jesus Lizard have to do with the Young Widows? Well, they are riding the same range, which they admit to themselves, and they do it so well, I feel ten years younger when “settle down city” hammers full blast through my rooms. Although musically there are some major differences, the blast of energy that comes from my speakers is the same heavy hitting, hypnotic, home-brewn punch hits close to home in Jesus Lizard land.

The Young Widows offer a vastly higher amount of chaos and rubble, which might as well be attributed to the brutal and harsh hardcore history of the band. They are made up of three quarters of what was Breather Resist before they fell apart. The chorus shouting parts definitely come from there. Or maybe because there is whiskey in the water in Louisville, Kentucky. Actually, I don’t miss the grooving surf-parts of JL in the mix of the Young Widows that much. As much as I am dwelling on the JL-comparison, I am still very much into viewing this band as something unique. I gotta stop the talk about JL here, because I am starting to get on my own nerves slowly, and that is never a good sign. But I also won’t switch over to Shellac, even if the beginning of “The Charmers” is a direct rip off, because of the same reason I just wrote down. In comparison to the mass of rip-offs of these two bands Young Widows is a completely different, way better thing. In relation as Uriah Heep were to Pink Floyd.

There is a factor of randomness in the songwriting that adds another measure of energy and reaction to the hard kicking noise rock of the Young Widows. Some songs seem to break up without notice, the guitar plays freaked and heavily distorted slides, that seem to move in different directions than the rest of the band. All the while the vocals wail and growl like someone starting to get horny after a three day drinking excursion. More psychosis, more evilness, more falling asleep fully clothed on the living room couch and waking up in the afternoon the next day.

You already notice, that there is a special kind of darkness surrounding this record. The kind of working man despair that is rolled into booze, images of lewdness and an overall frustration with the walls you have to run into headfirst to be able to live a regular live. This is not a young widow that is sad and depressed because she has lost a good man in a terrible accident and now all dreams of a happy family and a good life are gone. This is a young widow that has lost a rich old man in a somewhat suspicious accident and now is getting through the insurance money on booze, luxury items in cheap motels, lots of broken hearts of regular and not so regular joes and lots of acts that make up cheap crime and pulp novels. With a betrayed one-night lover cleaning his shotgun, an insurance detective sleeping in his car in front, half a dozen different kinds of stains on the bed covers and with Jim and Jack bottles rolling under the bed.