Warm Widow
Widower

5
...according to our Clinton on 22 October 2010.

Feckin' hell this album is great. A raw energetic tuneful blast of melodic noise from the mean streets of Manchester. The story goes that these were the demo's for a future album project but when the label heard them they decided to put them out as is. How right they were as the unsweetened approach serves the music perfectly. Its brutal lo-fi rock sitting somewhere between The Fall, Jesus Lizard and Guided By Voices. The guitars are constantly on the edge of mayhem only held together by the energetic drumming and thumping bass, but through the sludge emerge the most remarkable blasts of melody which keep your ears finely tuned throughout, it never becomes too tuneful, nor too difficult and it brings to mind the bleak inner city in which it was recorded, short blasts of sun peeking through the gap in the curtains of a darkened room. Other names that spring to mind are angry Salford noiseniks Dub Sex, the angular guitar stabs of Gang of Four, the production values recall the recent Women album. In fact this is like a bleak Northern English retort to the slightly more other worldly Women, both bands learning the lesson as provided by The Fall as you can screech and howl and make great swathes of noise but you must also have tunes and bugger me, this one does. It often recalls early Guided Voices and the vocals are very R. Pollard at times, this of course is a great thing. Highly recommended. 

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Sound clips for Widower by Warm Widow: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, White Box, WHITEBOX007, £9.79.

What their label says...

Info: Manchester’s Warm Widow never really intended to make this album – well, not in the way that ‘Widower’ presents itself anyway. This was supposed to be the scratchy blueprint for the actual Warm Widow album, recorded, you know, like proper albums are recorded: in a recording studio perhaps, with an array of ‘appropriate’ microphones, with an actual producer (or certainly an engineer), and time to allow the band the breathing space to ‘nail it’, with additional options to try multiple takes and overdubs - in general, recording with a certain amount of control and ease. Fact of the matter is, when White Box got their hands on the ‘Widower’ album, complete with the word ‘demo’ scrawled across the wonderfully refined cover art (courtesy of UK artist Rachel Goodyear), it was apparent what had to be done: the word ‘demo’ had to be removed - and that was pretty
much it. ‘Widower’ is an urgent and an unorthodox rock album. Captured live in a matter of hours, entirely recorded on three rather shitty SM58 microphones in the grimy confines of some of Manchester and Salford’s least-welcoming environments for a band trying to ‘lay it down’. The struggle the band found
their sorry asses enveloped in to make this record is the very thing that gives ‘Widower’ its character. You too would be keen to get the fucker nailed sharpish if you were working in a non-soundproofed room, above a gym full of pissed off bodybuilders and ‘bear-men’, keen to put into practice their
abilities to kick the living shit out of ‘noisy, talentless bastards upstairs’.
Yes, ‘Widower’ was born feet first and it shows in the way it thinks - ‘Widower’ worked at the sausage plant, which made its clothing stink. The trio of Lianne Steinberg (drums/totally fucked-up arm leading to a hiatus in performing for the best part of a year with the excruciatingly painful exception of
this recording session), Zak Hane (bass and homeless), and Martin Greenwood (guitar/vocal/ problematic approaches) had to fight and fuck their way through the session with minimum fuss, and an absolute determination to ‘finish’. Greenwood opted to ‘finesse’ the delicate flower that was becoming the ‘Widower Demo’ with a few additional guitar and vocal parts, setting about recording the ‘overdubs’ in his flat – much to the immediate annoyance of the neighbours, who quickly reported Greenwood to Manchester City Council (his landlords). Forced to choose between a completed recording and a roof over his head, he chose the demo, finally shifting operations into his make shift vocal booth – well…under the bed covers in attempts to muffle
the bleed of his vocal screeching. The outcome is presented here – you are left with a capture of three attuned performers, nailing…something. ‘Widower’s peculiar, broken sound is
the very thing about the record we love; to even attempt to re-record these tracks in a more professional environment would have been a pointless exercise. ‘Warm Widow’s lo-fi pop blasts give a nod of the head to some of the sexiest bands we’ve fawned over – album opener ‘Cracker’ recalls the ‘Slates’ period coldness of The Fall, Greenwood’s uniquely scattershot lyrical imagery cutting its own dark path throughout the record. Elsewhere there’s the early Jesus Lizard-esque ‘Lost Dog’. We find the Anglophile-via-U.S. pop sensibilities of Guided By Voices in there (title track ‘Widower’) – Guided By Voices seem to be a fitting reference point here, as a band whose sound became in part defined through their own limited recording
resources. Elsewhere ‘Dogs In The Surgery’ could have been co-written with Bob Mould during the Sugar period, ‘A Million Butterfly Skulls’ could have easily slipped its way onto Wire’s ‘Chairs Missing’ LP. Album closer ‘Back Of The Class’ resolutely and unashamedly echoes The Fall’s ‘Spoilt Victorian Child’.
There are undeniable points of reference to Warm Widow’s influences throughout ‘Widower’, but, like The Fall, their dark centre is clearly a sound which could only be born out of circumstance in a bleak inner-city surrounding – Manchester is the culprit. Warm Widow are the band. The sound is
future fucking now.

TRACKLISTING:

1) Cracker 2) Lost Dog 3) Ficht Heit 4) Widower 5) A Million Butterfly Skulls 6) In A Blackout 7) Dogs In The Surgery 8) Scruff Of His Neck 9) Back Of The Class