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Young Widows
Settle Down City
2006 – Jade Tree

Origin: Louisville, Kentucky
Style: Noise Rock

Purchase this album at Indie Rocket

Louisville, Kentucky, does not seem a likely city for a band like this to properly exist. You have to drive about 300 miles north to the city of Chicago and engulf yourself with the musical verbage of the Jesus Lizard or Rapeman via 1990 for the concept of the Young Widows to make sense . For Chicagoans, the obliteration of post-punk into a secular chant of jangling guitar noise incorporated with accentuated pounding bass and drum accompaniment gave the windy city a sense of identity.

But then again, 2006 does not seem like a good time for a band like this to exist. Or maybe it was the perfect time for this music to stand out. With indie rock all over the place and bands looking deep into the heart of rock and roll for expression, Young Widows do as best as any to bastardize the style and send it all crashing back down.

Where Big Black created, Young Widows progressed.

Originally the vocalist for the Louisville hardcore act Breather Resist, Steve Sindoni, left the other three members standing around while he went and formed the Jade Tree act Pusher. Wondering what they were going to do with a vocal-less band, it was a decision to continue on the path of Breather Resist and develop a sophomore album sans Sindoni. As they were developing the songs, something happened, their sound was no longer the belligerent hardcore the band had initially created. So instead of keeping the same name to coexist with the new style, they took on an entirely new persona. The change was drastic. Sure there are hints from their hardcore past as in “Glad He Ate Her,” but to even compare this with what Breather Resist did is insane. It’s a monumental shift in sound and style that one could argue sounds a little too close to what The Jesus Lizard did in the past (http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=167788) or (http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/8027).

With more of a bass and drum accompaniment, the low end is muddy and the notes are distorted down beyond coherence. And the guitars on this album are like shrapnel. With Breather Resist, their was a distinct direction, with Young Widows the only direction this band gives is the driving force of the rhythms that pound into your skull like ramming your head into the corner of a door frame and pulling the splinters out.

Whatever happened between the gritty hardcore days to the sloppy and oddball time configurations, it’s a choice that was well made and a direction that could be developed well beyond what Breather Resist could do, even if the Young Widows sound too much like they sit around the shrine of David Yow.

If you are or were not dedicated to that unruly sound of late ‘80s/early ‘90s Chicago, you probably won’t find this album as appealing to those who are. Taken as a whole, Settle Down City is an opus of austere angularity, individually, and the songs are hardly distinct to pick out of a lineup with the common ear.

Features ex-members of Breather Resist

Cross-Reference: Big Black, The Jesus Lizard, Rapeman