Get Delicious

• Settle Down City Special Edition LP
• Old Wounds CD
• Split Series – 4 splits that make a cool skull when put together on a hardwood floor
• White Large Print T-shirt from Shirtkiller.com $10 on sale
• Ticket to a show near you (at least $15)
• Charmer - Breather Resist CD

one line: dying in the middle of a gang bang and you’re not the center of attention

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Young Widows

The band Young Widows are a group of three dudes from Louisville, Kentucky that play minimalist Rock and Roll music emptied out of a burlap sack.  They formed as a way to deal with the singer/yeller/screamer of their previous group, Breather Resist, leaving.  If you think that judging by the name alone this band is music you wouldn’t show to your mom, you’re already headed in the right direction…unless, that is, your mom is a fan of Gang of Four or Stiff Little Fingers.  If your mom is an actual young widow I bet that would be weird too.

I want to first really gigantically clear the air here.  It’s quite clouded and smells like a tour van.  Anything you will google about Young Widows may inevitably lead you to read one sentence or sentence like thing.  If you have read most any interview with or about Young Widows, the beginning of it will probably sound like someone using something older to describe something newer and how “neat” they think that is.  If you dogpile search Evan Patterson you will also get some results about his brother.  In case you were to find some obscure blog from South America getting at what Young Widows are, it’d share something in common with almost anything else you could read about Young Widows.  That is kind of weird if you ask me.  The common thread is this: The Young Widows sound like and openly “wear their influences on their sleeve” – The Jesus Lizard.  The thing that really sucks about that is now that I have typed that and now that you have read it you will be just encased in this veil of DUH MAN! once you make a real good decision and cop some Young Widows stuff.  Please for the sake of your own souI try to not think that this band sounds like something else.  Ok, going to put it on the line for the last time here: they do.  And alright, everyone sounds similar to something else if you really get bored.  Also you won’t be the first one to say that.  By default what’s the friggin’ point of saying it then?  Just please don’t rub your dick back and forth to that particular RIYL.  You’ll go paralyzed.  Plus you may just realize that if this happens a lot when you talk about other bands, it “may” turn out that you “may” not like music as much as you “think” you do.  So let’s have a bit of fun here and see why Young Widows are deliciously different from most other groups these days.

Heavy music has never been easy to understand.  It’s always been disorienting, gutsy, terrifying, edge crushing or soul kidnapping stuff.  If it hasn’t felt that way to you than it’s probably not that worthwhile in the first place.  However one thing remains true, it’s not easy to understand what the hell is actually going on without seeing it live and hearing if it really is the “if I met God himself, even He would be cut” caliber thing that matters.  Tread lightly.  There are a ton of red flags out there about heavy music and all of them are pretty deceptive to a point (i.e. the right clothes or big facial hair or by something that could be deemed “tough”).  The key thing to remember here is that if you are defining music by the fashion you are definitely not defining it by the music.  Simply put real deadly music can deceptively only consist of- on the surface- 1. shoulder displacing volume 2. canyon huge sounding riffs and 3. break your head wide open speed/ murder contemplating emptiness one minute and cannonball exploded beef the next.  Believe it or not I have heard and seen mimicry of one or two of those things in some really awful music.  Those bands fool a lot of people too.  So, they’re doing something right.  Most of the time though a band like that (one using trickery, gimmicks – gimmickery) is only capable of one of those things at a time.  That’s the great news.  I will say it’s incredibly easier to be fooled live than to be fooled on a recording.  There are always exceptions to the rule though.  Recently I was tipped off by Animal about a new phenomenon called crab-core that is happening in the States.  As I don’t live there I had no way of seeing it firsthand.  Tokyo tolerates many a heinous trend but thankfully not the likes of what has happened in the States.  In crab-core the guitarist sits super low while playing some staccato sacramental hardcore riff.  While they do that the rest of the band has choreographed Motown-like moves.  We are all supposed to be impressed and think what a great innovative throwback that is.  With out going into what a bizarre idea “innovative throwback” is, an example of this kind of thing is a shuffle foot step, a collective hand wash gesture to remind you that this is a show. Instead of the softer movements of Motown a collective head bang or guitar flip are are incorporated to make it dood-edified (dude edified).  In the throws of crab-core one might think ‘Oh!  I totally get what they’re doing there.’  But no, it’s impossible.  You cannot “get” this thing.  There’s nothing to get.  It’s the curtain over the Chinese Water Torture that conceals the trick slots next to the lock.  It’s the one card trick your Dad knows of music.  There’s nothing to get because the secret is there is no secret: the perpetrators of this kind of thing rightly deserve to watch concert after concert of it and then just fade away into a job at the Warped Tour or something.  So, with nut-blasting music like YWs it is also never easy to know what the hell is going on or how to really get at the guts of it.  Things like crab-core just muss it all up anyway and just make music a linear joke told by Santa Claus.  This is also the great news.

The proclivity for many people to say the same thing about YWs  taps me on the shoulder that the band is great and that no one really knows what to say about them.  They’re too involved with knocking the brains out of your head and making you feel like you’re getting sick than busy answering why it is that everyone thinks they sound like someone else.  That is to say I do understand that using a description of sounding like The Jesus Lizard makes whatever music being talked about easy to manage.  Like, if you only had 12 seconds before the go-cart you were duct taped to was to be rocket propelled off a 400 meter ramp and if you couldn’t definitively encapsulate why the person with their finger on the button should listen to YWs you’d become a grease stain in the sky then of course I get why people say stuff like that.  I have a question though.  What the hell happened to enjoying yourself?  Why would you want an easy description of any music?  Again I understand time constraints or immediate demands.  But singles are still at least three minutes (or should be around that) in length.  That is a short investment.  Blurbs are cool.  They save time.  But singles decidedly do not even give you an accurate portrait of any group or any album either.  So, it’s not a waste of time per se it’s just, you know, not conducive to something a little more worthwhile maybe.  God, Sasha Frere Jones does not read my stuff, but if he read this he might hate me.  Oh well.

It takes the GZA a few days to record a album.  It takes YWs longer than that to record an album. Thee Ohsees can record a record in the time it takes to play a full set it seems.  Let’s have some respect for the music y’all.  It can only take three minutes to enjoy the music and if it’s it’s good enough, can hold years worth of admiration and healthy exposition.  It may help you get laid for God’s sake.  So this is call to slow down and sit with it.  Smoke a cigarette and drink some coffee.  Eat soup with it.  You may want to stick around and eat the rest of the meal with the music.  Ok, I regret to inform you that the girl of your dreams will not want to have sex with you while YWs are playing on the stereo.  It’s not YWs fault.  It’s your fault for dreaming out of your league.

Seeing canyon sized riffs- Hearing cannonball exploded beef (my capatain beefheart exposition section)

I don’t like it when people say that all food tastes the same.  That may bother me more than noticing someone breathing through their nose in church.  I haven’t been to church in about ten years but I have never ceased to be reminded of hideous breathing since my last church-going experience.  Just go anywhere people have to stand, sit, or mosey around some place, usually against their will, and you’ll have a wretched methodical breather near you.  I had gone to catholic school and no matter how bad I hated going to that dead ritual called mass every week it never failed that some person somewhere around me was really feelin’ the spirit so hard that they could not find it in themselves to just alternate between nose and mouth respiration.  Respiration of that caliber is catatonic enjoyment like watching a video of someone masturbating while that person is stroking off to a destruction derby- only their head being shown.  That person was usually my grandfather; not the person masturbating but the one breathing mono-nasalistically (made that word up, yes) and he was a firefighter when he was my age.  He did that job for a long time.  I say that  because of that job he gets five years worth of a get-out-of-jail-free card for exhaling inconsiderately in his old age.  It’s okay now because he is dead.  He died holding that card.  I miss him.  I tell ya, if I were a firefighter in this day and age I would definitely be listening to Young Widows when fighting a fire.

When I was a kid and still impressed considerably easier than now.  I had always been morbidly curious about what music they played at the firehouse when the fighters weren’t accruing 50 lbs. of gear and trying to save a life from man’s true enemy and savior: fire.  That curiosity was quenched when I got the opportunity to hang out at firehouse #115 in West Toledo.  A guy my dad played softball with was a firefighter.  I had said to my dad I wanted to go to the firehouse and probably pet a Dalmatian or something.  Funny thing is that they did have a Dalmatian.  It was called Spark.  Most of the guys called it Flinty though.  The coolest part is that they pumped James Brown the entire time through these ridiculous, humongous speakers in the game room all day.  At least while I was there.  It seemed like there was a barbecue happening most of the time I was there too.  At some fire houses they might play Jerry Lee Lewis and at others, who knows, they might bust Pavorotti the whole time.  Everyone of the firehouses(? homes) is different.   They couldn’t all of them be the same.  Buildings are different heights.  More or less rooms than others.  The climate is different which would demand slightly different building materials.  The neighborhood and constituency would shift at a pretty regular rate.  You’d also have to assume that every time you get ready to leap into a fire there are many seen and unforeseen problems that could arise.  The ceiling could have already collapsed.  A stairway might be melting.  A family could have ran into a basement.  The dog might bite you.  Hell, the owner could have a collection of agressive alligators in the guest bedroom.  There are all these problems within certain houses, built at certain times, built by certain building companies which then would have used different building materials.  Different materials burn differently.  Standards for construction, no matter how perfect you think certain things in society are, do change over time.  They also change quite frequently.  If you don’t think of all of these things, as a firefighter, you might unfortunately already be dead.  I mean running into burning buildings is a box I guess you have to check on the fireman application before you become a firefighter.  Metaphysically or otherwise.

Now if I were someone who ate McDonalds at least six times in one week, I would no doubt be capable of saying things like “I’m lovin’ it” or “it tastes like chicken”.  People that don’t eat at McDonalds less than that have probably said when eating shark or whale or alligator or some creature that yes, it tastes like chicken.  My little sisters said turkey tasted like chicken during their second Thanksgiving.  They were two.  This may be a bad example but if you think anything that is not chicken tastes like chicken and really believe it, congratulations!  You probably are one of the billions and billions to be sold to.  For those that understand (and I believe there are many) that saying something tastes, sounds or looks like something else this is a nice “small talk” device to get people to like you.  People may even be inclined to agree with you about how similar  one thing is to some other thing.  It’s like saying it’s hot outside.  It’s something people do.  Most of the time it’s harmless.  Prince looks like Jimi Hendrix, I said it!  Prince has a sexual style on his guitar that sounds like Jimi (amongst other things!!!!).  Fact of the matter is is that chicken may not taste the same as anything else.  Hell, I am going to say that I have never had chicken taste repeatedly the same except for a few rare occasions (I don’t eat fast food).  The complexities to get this particular chicken to taste like that particular chicken are obvious as well as mind boggling.  In my experience it rarely happens.  At this moment please excuse me.  I have been standing on my head writing this for the past hour.  Wait. I am lying.  I was not typing this at that point.  I was watching The Matrix.  I was trying to induce psychosis via gravity.  It kind of worked.  Standing on my head feeling gravity is like standing on my feet feeling it.  It’s amazing.

Hit Me As Hard As You Can.  I’m Dying.

Let’s discuss for a moment doing anything that could be considered disrespectful while fighting a fire and how I think it is automatically not disrespectful.  Doing something to music has always made that particular activity more enjoyable, to me at least.

#1, You didn’t start the fire.  In fact the person who could have fallen asleep smoking in their easy chair or a kid twirling around with a box a matches trying to light as many blue-tips as he could started it.  Or it was faulty craftsmanship.  Or, you did start the fire because it was your property or a close friends property and you are obviously doing it for insurance purposes.  We all have got to do what we all have got to do.  And fires like these have always been burning.  Anyway, modus operandi for fighting the fire is so it doesn’t get to other parts of the neighborhood and kill a ton of other people.  That would make people homeless.  Homeless people are a hassle from a complete city government point of view.  In the process of fighting a fire the authorities might save a life or two.  That is a seen as a plus.  Some call it a good deed.  A fireman calls it his job.  So, listening to music while doing your job could involve blasting the firetrucks stereo while trying to snuff a fire.  Yeah!  This is an automatic O.K. I think.  It goes without saying that I will never be a firefighter.  Maybe for this reason?  Like, if you were to go to a funeral it would be the perfect opportunity to listen to Young Widows- just as the coffin was being lowered.  Whoa.  But you’d be the most gigantic jackoff in at least 8 counties.  Or if you gathered up the nuts to go into the woods of Alaska at night intending on hunting down and killing The King of the Wolves, having Young Widows in your noise canceling earbuds, you’d both be shitting on the prowess of the Wolf King and you’d be all sorts of dead in no time.  Some things just can’t be done.  A lot of the times some things like only breathing through your nose -consciously or unconsciously- shouldn’t be done.  In a fireman’s case, it is both recommended to listen to something like the music of Young Widows while strangling a fire.  **SUGGESTION** Remember the movie Backdraft starring Kurt Russel?  Go dig out that VHS or rent or steal that movie, put it on mute, and just listen to Young Widows’ Old Wounds and Settle Down City in that order on repeat while you set your zine collection on fire.  If the fireman who rescues you doesn’t ask you who that was playing on the stereo as he drug you out of the burning wreckage I will be aghast with surprise.

#2, Have you ever been around a real roaring fire?  Like a bonfire in Michigan that’s as tall as a farmhouse?  It is one of the loudest natural phenomenons this world has to offer that isn’t involved with the weather.  If you were listening to anything while punching a fire to death be it The Jesus Lizard or Friction you’d have a hard time hearing anything other than fire unless you were bumping it in the best system tax money could buy.  Now that I am writing this I am getting more and more curious about the possibility of music being pumped into the ear pieces in fire-helmets?  If anyone who reads this knows anything about making soundtracks for firefighting let a brother know at bigdelicious@getdeliciousDOTnet.  Also, being inside of a burning building would be terrifying for a pinata full of reasons.  One, as with anything, is the fear of death.  The others are just variations including the end result of the initial fear.  You have to give firemen a break here.  They should be able to drink from a golden boot for a press conference after each successful extinguishing of a fire in any neighborhood the world over.

#3 I don’t think Young Widows have intentionally created 26 plus songs to put a fire out to.  This is what I call a synchronized congruence.  Although fires have been around for a real long time I think making music that compliments the task of fighting fires has just naturally occurred here.  A tip on how to extinguish a flame to death involves a person having to beat at the thing on fire with a hatchet.  In other cases you have to smother the thing do death with a wool blanket or something.  This does not mean that all music simile-ed together between The Jesus Lizard and Young Widows ( or between anyone for that matter) can be put on playlist for firefighting.  It appears I am trying to snuff the idea of simile here.  Maybe I am.  Anyway, I have come to describe this linear styled, hefty music in verse.  Now, if you please…

I think I have found it
some event that all of us
anywhere can share
agreeing about anything
in public aural endeavors.

That ‘thing’
that ‘anything’
it’s a bang
a bang smash
a crash bash
slash or

THUMP!

How great does it sound when a piece of junk is dropped off the top of a pick up truck parked on the edge of a cliff, free falls and then just crushes into another pile of junk at the bottom.  I’ve seen it in movies.  I’ve done it in gorge-like places in Tennessee.  Bjork wrote a song about it.  So I really don’t have to write about this any more.  That don’t mean I am going to.  On occasion I have called music like the Young Widows “sports” music.  What crunchy hard rock music couldn’t be considered sports like.  Well it’s not sports like.  It’s sports affiliated.  Maybe it’s just how music and sports share something intangible with each other.  They share a common bond through entertainment as most anything does however some sports definitely conjure up something that could also be considered art.  The same goes into the performance of most any music.  It’s funny in music’s case that the opponent is the audience.  Perhaps the thing truly shared is just how intense music and sports can get inside of their respective mediums.

If YWs were a sport they’d be snowboarding.  It’s something that to the listener it instills a feeling however gigantically crushing it remains fluid.  Notes and vocals and bass and drums are dwarfed by the surrounding empty spaces of the music as it slips down Rock and Roll’s mountainside.  You get to settle into the grooves.  It’s fun but nothing to make you really smile about because the threat of death or being destroyed by Rock and Roll mountain is ever present with this band.  Ultra simplistic vocal yellings come out of whispers like a man slow to anger but when angered is Montezuma.  The quiet loud dynamic has one direction before you have three dudes thrashing fists at their instruments and punching at their stuff like some bar room brawl.  In the case of snowboarding when you are tilted toward the mountain the mountain is trying to eat you.  Mother nature wants you to fall, spilling blood down her majestic breast.  It’s a fight against the mountain and it’s a fight against yourself. YWs ebb and flex right on down.  Hypnotic is their pace and pendulous are the thrills of it.  The rider cuts between two rows of trees and the helicopter of our own hearing starts to pull back.  The behemoth that YWs slide down is growing.  The mountain becomes much bigger than we thought and the one thing holding it all together, swooping down it is becoming smaller and smaller while it slices grooves into Rock music’s face.  Then you see it.  From far away now, one gorge hidden behind a row of trees.  It’s the size of Satan’s bowling alley.  The rider couldn’t possibly see it.  They’re going to fast and the trees are becoming to dense for them to notice they’re getting closer to it.  Strings are popping and ripping out of control against a black background.  The guy won’t survive.  If they knew what they were up against they’d surely waver.  You bite your bottom lip and slowly curl your fist.  This is it  - The couloir.   Suddenly the fury just drops out.  Someone, somewhere inside of a sinking submarine knows exactly how you feel.   It’s all in free fall.  You’re thinking there is no way in hell this band going to survive.  They are going to die when they hit the bottom.  You’re feeling a strangers meaty hands around your throat until BASH! you’re back in it and you have got to check to see if you”re still able to hang on while the music is tearing it’s way down this mother fucking mountain.

Posted: August 15th, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Evan Patterson, Fireball Island, Jeremy McGonigle, Kentucky, Louisville, MInimalist Sports Grind, Monopoly, Nick Thieneman, Rock and Roll, The Young Widows, Young Widows, zak mccune
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