Review
True Widow
As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth

True Widow are one of the many bands that gets lumped into the burgeoning new school of shoegaze. While shoegaze bands of the past played their own style and created something different many newer bands are acting as though having an array of pedals and knowing Loveless front to back warrants having a band. The good news is Dallas, Texas' True Widow don't play that game. The band have created what they call Stonegaze to describe themselves and it is as appropriate a genre tag as one can formulate. The band takes the gritty, down tuned, syrupy fury of sludge metal and melds it with the effects and harmonies of shoegaze. The band plays the balancing act between the two without letting either truly "win" out over the other.
Each song is by itself a beautiful drifting piece floating along in it's own time. This allows for the record to have an enveloping and atmospheric effect upon the listener. From the True Widow proves capable of making their own rules within their chosen style. From dueling male and female harmonies to jangling guitar chords allowing the listener a brief respite from the heaviness. Each song is pieced together with precision and care.
No instrument in particular wins out within the context of the song as a whole. At any single point the guitar parts may come crashing covering the molasses slow distorted bass rumbling in the distance and still beyond that the drums building into a furious roll. All these things are available in their time and place but nothing is too heavy or too quiet. The songs feel as though they have been put together carefully and with precision rather than being pieced together strictly for maximum impact.
Each part of this release has been attended to thoroughly. Meaning, that the austere artwork and distance placed into the production play a role in the overall product and help in their own ways to make the record stronger. The artwork feels plain at first look as the front cover and back are rather muted designs against a white backdrop. The real beauty comes when the rest of the art is inspected as one can see pictures that seem to really pertain to the atmosphere of the songs.


All of these things allow True Widow to stick out amongst their peers. They inhabit their own space in a scene that pines for the past.