[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I love this band, I just discovered them at the Wild Flag gig at the spaceland last week. I had heard of em, but not heard them, nor given half a chance considering the myriad of new music to sort through out there..

but they opened for wild flag and I was not disappointed. I loved their minimalist yet intricate guitar/bass work, the driving and delightful drumwork, and of course the highlight post-riot grrl female vocal harmonies which is the thing now for this scene and these ladies pull it off as good as CSN&Young! I'm seeing it described sort of as surf music, and while I can hear it, I would say its not quite, it has too much of a 94 Olympia sound to be surf music.

I have been downloading a few things and trolling around some other places and I love what I am hearing, almost as much as I enjoyed the wild flag show itself! I really like this band, a new favorite already in heavy rotation.

anyone else?

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Grass Widow - "11 of Diamonds" (Past Time)

In an interview with Jennifer Egan, Nick Sylvester brought up an old, but naggingly persistent, problem with music criticism: "One of the gripes people can have about music writing is when the writer just lists band names as reference points rather than describing the music itself." Fair point, and timely. An overload of rehash artists and bandwagoneers has made it difficult to differentiate bands both from each other and their historical antecedents without more ubiquitous signposts. Cocktails of prominent influences, ‘relevant’ contemporaries, and heavy use of the suffix “-esque” supplant earnest discussion of sound with a more relatable game of “sounds like.” Now, it’s easy to blame this critical consternation on the laziness of the people making the records, but that’s an unfair stance. As listeners, we are, at best, becoming too lazy to describe what we’re hearing and, at worst, losing the ability to do so without crutches.

Grass Widow, however, provokes a need to describe. And Past Time, its first for Kill Rock Stars, is a singular record that deserves your full attention. Placing them within a historical context isn’t that hard at first blush. But it’s an immensely reductive practice that glosses over the details. Doug Mosurock first called the band an “all-female pop exuberance machine, playing double-time games with a sound template expanded well beyond the daily standard of reverb-drenched, rudimentary pop” in Still Single. That idea of its songs as architecture, building on the foundations and skeletal supports of basic pop structures, has never been more apropos.

Charting the course of small twists and idiosyncrasies that populate Past Time will be unique to each person (each listen, even), but here’s what I gathered from maybe my 20th listen. The end of opener “Uncertain Memory” winds down with the bass — the prominent, thrumming, irregular organ that moves so many songs forward — dissolving into a small, ominous arrangement for a string quartet. The chords move glacially further into minor depths, and somehow carry over so much foreboding into “Shadow.” It’s bumpier, quicker, ostensibly lighter, but Hannah Lew’s bass tone still hews closely to the shadows being described. Raven Mahon also starts to build a more aggressive campaign, with bursts of cathartic guitar violence made for arenas as much as dive bars. The two spend the better part of the middle section of the album engaged in call-and-return that has both pickers weaving in and out of the metronymic traffic control maintained by Lillian Maring’s drumming.

It all seems very precarious sometimes, but the machine is maintained immaculately. That’s what makes the moments of unity so much more forceful: a single bar of syncopation in the middle of “Give Me Shapes” makes an old dance step seem utterly original. And when all three of their normally jousting voices combine for the chorus on “Landscape,” the harmonic alignment provides an expansive comfort that comes with staring at the sky, be it clouds or stars. The dream-state maintains throughout “Submarine,” probably their deepest song and the easiest to get lost in. Grass Widow manages to fit the full range of its talents into a single sub-three minute song with a singular density of experience. It starts in the basement with a droning organ and spirals all the way up to a precariously dissonant bridge before settling back into a pillowy harmony as the organ reappears.

And all of a sudden, it’s over. “Tuesday” builds to a kind of symphonic closing frenzy that closes with a real sense of punctuation. Still, the expectation of one more song being met with silence is something of a shock. Even now, the immersion is distractingly complete enough that the end catches me off-balance.

This kind of detail-heavy album can make you feel like you’re missing something if you’re not paying attention. Each listen can run the risk of feeling incomplete. But by that same token, it also means it can feel new each time. The double meaning behind the album title only came to me now, in trying to figure out how to wrap this thing up. I take it to be: “Past time” is the perfect description for both the act and experience of listening to an album. Particularly this one.





By Evan Hanlon

Fried Egg
Shadow

[SpaceCadetHayden]

Wow! I just checked out 'Fried Egg' and I'm hooked. I'll be ordering their album with my next Kill Rock Stars order. Thanks, man.

[stu666]

yeah i love this band.

[Genteel Death]

I saw them opening for Naked on The Vague and instantly loved them. These girls have some real subtlety to their songwriting. And their drummer especially is a treat.

[keep poppin pimples]

i like it

strong basslines

want to see in person

[Stijn]

Yes! but i liked their previous album better than the new one. Especially to where and out of body experience. The threeway vocal harmonies are so great.

I should give the last one another spin

[hevusa]

I like, I like!
Thanks for the recommendation!

[TheMadcapLaughs]

hehe, i big upped them a while back on porkys "lo-fi girls" thread. they're great. i like their first album alot. their new one is kinda stale. all the songs sound the same. but yeah, they're very talented. watching them live can be kinda dicey if the PA is no good since so much of their appeal is their vocal harmonies. anyways, great band and nice girls

[Decayed Rhapsody]

Saw them when they opened for SY at Prospect Park and loved it. The album's really intricate. You can sort of trace their influences but they're putting their own spin on it. Really TIGHT band, interesting structures, which is more than can be said for most shoddy "lo-fi" trendhoppers.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by SpaceCadetHayden

Wow! I just checked out 'Fried Egg' and I'm hooked. I'll be ordering their album with my next Kill Rock Stars order. Thanks, man.

you too

I have Shadow on near constant repeat, that fucking vocal harmony/chorus on the bridge hits me in a sweet spot, stopping me dead in my tracks..

I don't know if this music makes me overjoyed or sorrow-stricken, but either way I am hooked

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

I saw them opening for Naked on The Vague and instantly loved them. These girls have some real subtlety to their songwriting. And their drummer especially is a treat.

yes, she is..

Originally Posted by keep poppin pimples

want to see in person

much stronger,dynamic stage show than the albums capture..

Originally Posted by Stijn

The threeway vocal harmonies are so great.

I should give the last one another spin

superb, and I will check it out. I got some tunes from all the albums but not all of the albums..

Originally Posted by hevusa

I like, I like!
Thanks for the recommendation!

You must spread some reputation around before giving it to hevusa again.

[the ikara cult]

this is really great stuff, thanks

[EVOLghost]

yeh. Saw them with SY in July. I listened to a song before the show and wasn't really impressed, but they really got me when they played live.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to EVOLghost again.

[stu666]

Grass Widow - Los Angeles, November 19, 2010 by etherman

i'll upload this here when i grab it....

[SuperCreep]

i saw them open for SY in prospect park as well. they were pretty good; way better than that awful talk normal band. i haven't heard any of their studio material, but i could see them sounding better on record.

[stu666]

Grass Widow
Spaceland
Los Angeles, California
November 19, 2010

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2V0YH6C5

[ilduclo]

Stu

"file unavailable"

ild

GOT IT, Thansks , Stu!

[stu666]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

Stu

"file unavailable"

ild

i don't know why it keeps saying that, refresh the page a few times and it should work... it's working for me!

[loubarret]

Their doing a EU tour, so i am catching them in Utrecht.