The American band Sour Widows debuts this week with “Revival Of A Friend”. The band from California worked on the album for seven years and had to deal with the loss of loved ones and the corona pandemic during this period. Luckily the album was released, because “Revival Of A Friend” is an excellent album.
It’s an album that initially took me back to the 90s. After all, Sour Widows’ debut album contains quite a few influences from indie rock and slowcore from this decade. For example, “Revival Of A Friend” mainly contains songs that mainly move at a slow pace, but that can explode just like that. It provides the album with the dynamics that were common in the indie rock of the 90s.
The guitar work on the album also reminds me of rock music from a few decades ago. The guitar work on “Revival Of A Friend” is melodic and spacious, but can also sound quite gritty. The guitar work on the album is responsible for the dynamics in the music of Sour Widows, while the rhythm section mainly plays supportively, although the drummer of the band certainly deserves the necessary credit.
The beautiful guitar work on the debut album of the Californian band is combined with soft and often almost sweet vocals and that is also an important ingredient of the indie rock from the 90s. Where many 90s bands had one female figurehead, Sour Widows has two.
Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko both account for both the guitar work and vocals on the album and this double line-up enriches both the instrumentation and vocals on “Revival Of A Friend”. You can also hear that the two have been playing together for years, because both the guitar parts and the vocals of Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko flow together beautifully and know how to reinforce each other again and again. Eventually enlisting drummer Max Edelman to flesh out their sound
Especially in the longer tracks on the album, the band makes a lot of use of repetitive chords, so that the music of Sour Widows has a special or even almost hypnotic effect on the listener. Especially in the subdued passages, which dominate the album, it is striking with how much care is played and that care is reflected in the vocals. The music of Sour Widows can sound rough at the same time and that’s great.
It’s all beautifully captured by Maryam Qudus, who produced the album together with the band and who added some atmospheric synths to the sound on “Revival Of A Friend”.
“Revival Of A Friend” contains over fifty minutes of music, which is a long time for a debut album. Due to the slow tempo and a number of longer tracks, the album seems to last longer, but the debut album of Sour Widows never gets boring. “Revival Of A Friend” can easily ripple along in the background, but the songs of Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko become even more beautiful when you listen to them with full attention and considerable volume.
The Fat Angel Sings 