Young Widows - Bonnie Prince Billy split on Temporary Residence Records

While on my Young Widows kick, I remembered this first release in the series, the split with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and pulled it out of the 'to review' pile.
This is another great split colored vinyl...almost clear on one side with white streaks and bright green on the other. I love this, and thinking that these were $4 on the site, they are not making any money on this series, just getting a beautiful piece out to fans of the people on these splits and maybe making new ones of Young Widows.
The Young Widows track is 'King of the Back Burners', nice title, very Don Cab. I'm really liking this one, it's very shellac sounding to me, lots of room noise, really clean, gated, separated sounds. The same guitar bursts, the crunchy bass hits right along with the kick. It's all recorded great, I love this huge really detailed sound. It's inherently loud, but still has all these nice subtleties. Vocally it's even a little more shellac-esque, not so macho yelling. The whole thing builds to a stutter finish...Another plus.
I'm going to check out the other two after this, My Disco and Melt-Banana, just to see how these Young Widows tracks play out.
The Bonnie 'Prince' side has Will singing with someone else not listed in the liner notes, and I think a keyboard bassline, it's pretty minimal, could be an electric bass preset or something. It's typical Will at first, mostly vocal melody driven. I wonder if he starts every song as an a capella version and fills in the guitar. He's successfully reached a perfect balance of staying under the radar and not being overexposed or having tracks end up on the next Garden State soundtrack, while releasing more music than is nearly humanly possible. He's a machine. There's really nothing I don't like, certain songs don't hit me right away but I'll want to hear them more eventually.
Surprisingly there's some electronics here, some kind of moog or early synth and I don't know what era I'm in all of a sudden. I can't get over how he continues to do these really surprising things for having the amount of material already behind him. When he comes in over the entire instrumentation with a booming monotone voice: 'Souls / in a moment of sharing / look back' really loud while he's quietly singing the same lines underneath in that call and response way.
Then just as the song is winding down, it comes back stronger with wailing voices taking over in a final chorus. I don't know how he keeps doing it.

Completely sold out at the source but Discogs has a couple available for sale from members...they look like they are all UK based, but it's something.
And it also looks like Insound still has it also.

Young Widows - Pelican Split on Temporary Residence Records

Got the last two in this set from Temporary Residence recently and finally got around to listening to this one yesterday. Young Widows have some powerful friends....I haven't heard of these guys before this and they've teamed up with some heavy hitters on these splits from Temporary Residence.
First of all TR, put together a nice release here, each quarter face of this puzzle, which is art in the style of The Young Widows latest and it's printed with high gloss ink on the matte black sleeve, which you can't exactly tell from inside the shrink wrap. Then the vinyl itself is split light yellow and dark red. I wasn't expecting these details and that always makes a split like this even cooler.

The Young Widows track 'Mid-Western starts with a far off feedback guitar until lots of slow booming toms come in. I really like where this is going with the distorted guitar strums come in. They're playing with the stop start huge drum massive sound, but and I'm sorry to say, the vocals just kill this for me. It's the throat yelling...I couldn't get past it with Isis either. When it comes to metal, the only thing I can really get into is the instrumental. I don't know why.. the vocals just pigeonhole it too much for me, it places it in too much of a particular time and place.

I haven't heard the recent Pelican releases like the split with These Arms are Snakes and Ephemeral yet so I can't really compare this track 'Inch Above Sand' except to City of Echoes...this immediately sounds optimistic, hitting those higher distortion harmonics, that are just slightly dirtier than the huge bass lows that they get into on tracks. They keep repeating this high scale melody that goes low and then it all stops for the drums to take over, and it all quiets down...it pauses for a minute and then rocks the melody all over again with solos over it. It's kind of taking both the catchier melodic and sub bass doom in this last part...according to Hydrahead this track is going to be on the new album, but leave it to those guys that this is a demo version, or the one of the full length will be in a different key. To be fair the track listing says 'An Inch Above Sand', so this could be an abbreviated version....

2000 copies and then it's gone forever. Vinyl collective it seems, still has some copies.

Young Widows / Bonnie Prince Billy split on Temporary Residence Records

I heard about this a while back, and in case I already mentioned it a bunch of posts back, sorry, but here it is again. Temporary Residence announced this split series with Young Widows. The first split announced in the series is with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. I have to admit I blindly ordered into this series without really listening to Young Widows....I'm a little surprised, but then again I guess not. Mr. Billy has an eclectic group of recordings and is a fan of some crazy shit obviously. Maybe it'll be amazing because it is such a polar opposite pairing.

Now that I'm actually listening to Young Widows, there are elements of shellac, stuttered clipped guitar...they get into some great metal-ish running riffs, with pauses, slightly math....it's just the vocals really aren't doing it for me....now maybe it's something I could get used to .....like ISIS...or just appreciate them musically enough to not care that much.

There are times when I think 'Ok I have some room in my library for more instrumental metal' and then they go and scream almost emo exaggerated vocals that sound layered and recorded in an empty room it just takes me out of it, this sound has been ruined by too many hacks...you have to be aware of the baggage that comes along when you sound like so many of those dicks. This band isn't making it easy on themselves.
Them I swear it sounds like Rollins Band or something....or Helmet. When everyone is yelling the chorus it goes a little Fugazi and I'm into it again.
If I was skating in my garage on a shitty halfpipe, this would kill. It would be stuck in the tape player.

If Bonnie is any indication of where this singles club is going It's going to be a real interesting series that's for sure.


TRACK LISTING
1. YOUNG WIDOWS: King Of The Back-Burners
2. BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY: Poor Shelter

Following on the heels of their breakthrough Old Wounds album, Young Widows have assembled an all-killer-no-filler split single series, featuring new, unreleased Young Widows jams, split up over four separate 7" singles, accompanied by a handful of their favorite friends and artists on the opposite sides of each single. Those artists include Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Melt-Banana, Pelican, and a final mystery artist to be named at a later date. All songs by all artists are brand new and exclusive to this series. Each single is strictly limited to a one-time pressing of 2,000 copies. The artwork for the four singles fits together to form one large, beautiful puzzled image. This first single in the series features Young Widows and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.