Send "True Widow " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Common wisdom has it that a band’s second album is a proving ground. Whatever novelty it had from the debut has worn out; either the band can rest on its laurels and repeat its successful performance or else find something new that pushes boundaries. On True Widow’s follow up to 2008’s solid self-titled debut, the Texas trio takes a third but equally successful route: the band pares its sound down to its barest elements and thus bests its earlier album at its own game. Where the first album provided a nice slow desert revamp of ‘90s shoegaze and grunge tropes, As High as the Highest Heavens and from the Center to the Circumference of the Earth makes these references into something new, what the band calls “stonegaze”, minimal expanses of painfully slow, but overwhelmingly effective heavy rock songs.True Widow plays so slowly that it seems impossible. The best track on the album, “NH”, has a near-Black Sabbath riff of heavy guitar doubled with fuzzy bass—but the song is slower than even Sabbath would do it. The drums crash with every chord, but there is so much space between that the reverberation takes over the playing. On top of this, Dan Philips, who doubles as guitarist, sings with a weary ache the simple and inscrutable lyrics, “Out in the hue and cry / I know I have been a liar / And of the curtain call / I know where I’ll go this time”. Though the nearly seven-minute-long track only goes through this single verse twice (once fuzzy, once clean), and there is no real chorus to speak of, it never feels dragging. The rhythm plods along, but the long drawn-out dynamics are breathtaking. Bassist Nikki Estill sings as well with a similar vocal approach to Philips: slow and narcotic. The feminine touch brings to mind some ‘90s touchstones, like the Breeders in a K hole, or a minimalist My Bloody Valentine. But Estill doesn’t really lighten things up. She sings on the pounding opener, “Jackyl”, which sets the tone for the whole album of sludgy shoegaze and spaced-out singing. Compared to the first album, Philips has shed some of his more obvious grunge influences. His voice mixes elements of Will Oldham and Josh Homme, sweet but weary. When Estill and Philips harmonize, an indelible sweetness overlays the doomed rawness of the music....full text |
| Pegasusnews |
| If you like your music heavy and trance-like, then Dallas band True Widow delivers the goods with its new album As High As The Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of The Earth, released by Brooklyn's Kemado Records Tuesday. As High As The Heavens has lots of anticipation in indie-rock quarters not only because of Slowride's celebrated status but because True Widow's 2008 self-titled release was strong. The trio, led by Dan Phillips, formerly of Slowride, churns it out slow and primal from the first dirge-y note, with the bass building a relentless, mesmerizing platform that barely lets up throughout the 9-track album. It's as if the CD grabs you and forces you to stop moving so fast, for god's sake, just slow down for minute and listen to what they have to say. It's always great when a record opens in a manner as defiantly anti-commercial as this. Then again, True Widow's entire posture is true-blue indie, starting with the album's hilariously useless cover art offering little solid information. They use a scripty font that makes their name hard to read, and the album title is so long that they've abbreviated it on the spine and left poor Kemado to spell it out on a circular sticker placed on the disposable shrink wrap. (Though Fiona Apple's When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King What He Knows Throws The Blows When He Goes To The Fight And He'll Win The Whole Thing beats them, sadly.)...full text |
| Allmusic |
| Existing in a murky haze somewhere between drone and the slacker rock, True Widow weave together heaviness and harmony on their sophomore album, As High as the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth. With a guitar sound that’s not so much detuned as it is shuddering, the band explores the vast and lonely depths of the sonic spectrum. Preventing the album from slipping into the territory of glacial doom, however, are the vocals. Drenched in reverb, the male/female harmonies wrap the listener up like a down comforter, completely enveloping everything they touch while providing a drifting feeling that keeps the trudging pace of the album from ever feeling like it’s about to stall out. The combination creates an odd kind of magic that at times feels as if you’re listening to an album of Earth covering Pavement, with songs like “Skull Eyes” mixing the former's sense of spaciousness and tempo with the latter's penchant for melodies, and which feel like they’re barely held together, threatening to come apart at the seams at the slightest jostling, but never actually doing so. With its slow, even pacing and spaciousness, As High as the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth is a fantastically understated piece of headphones-ready post-rock goodness that will draw you into its depths with deceptively simple arrangements before trapping you in its sludgy melodies, making for a fantastic follow-up from this promising band....full text |
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