A Mirror Facing a Mirror: Power Sucker by Young Widows

My nephew has started getting some records – the blessed curse, the box of vinyl pushed uphill for a lifetime. He’s still a pre-teen, so he has yet to cut off all communication with the adults in his lives (as will be his right) and he proudly sent me a pic of his burgeoning collection: Nirvana’s In Utero and Alice in Chains’ Dirt. Towering records that can set firm roots for any growing collection, and at first blush, I was proud to see.

But then I reflected, as is the right of age, that my brother and I were getting into these very same bands when we were on the cusp of the great hormonal shift of our lives. The difference of course is that back then Kurt and Layne were still with us, and these records were just released, 30 years ago or so (pause for wailings and lamentations). So I asked myself, and a few others, does this mean my nephew at his age, getting into these records cut twenty years before his birth, is the equivalent of when I was in high school and many of my music loving classmates were hooked on Led Zep, the Stones, and Sabbath?

I hated those kids, for dumb teenager reasons, mostly that they seemed stuck in the ways of their fathers and mothers, older siblings and cousins, having found nothing for themselves. They were ignorant of the new guard, songs heard for the first time at the behest of no one, other than the TV or the radio. Music their parents couldn’t comprehend (like my father, disgusted at Kurt’s disrespect of his guitars on stage)? Of course, I had no real notion of the old guard beyond that they’ve always existed from my point of view, and were therefore uninteresting. Who was I to proclaim their death simply due to the passage of time?

Luckily, I shed these absurd notions relatively quickly, as the Pink Floyd kids’ tastes and mine continued to grow. My nephew’s generation, from what I’ve seen as a teacher and uncle to many friends kids, is much more empathically tuned than that as well, opening their minds much earlier. And Nirvana and Alice in Chains are stones on the path, one foot forward, another foot forward, as Young Widows sings in “Exit Slowly” from their new record Power Sucker. We all walk.

Young Widows are lifers, voracious listeners, and victims of creativity’s incessant call. Despite a ten year hiatus (never really announced, just life shit you know), they’ve kept active between other bands, visual art, photography, carpentry, raising families, unwilling to force something that didn’t feel imperative. And while I’ve missed them, this was the move they had to make, and part of why they hold such a high place in my own personal pantheon. There have been many bands that when I found them felt rooted in me in ways I couldn’t fully explain, though I never stopped the attempt. I was there when the Young Widows recorded part of their sophomore and landmark album Old Wounds at Death by Audio in Brooklyn, and the band never really left rotation from me after that.

So when Power Sucker was announced I said fuck yeah, I slammed pre-order instantly, I listened through the first single “Call Bullshit” on repeat in a way I haven’t done for many other songs in a good long while. But at the same time I worried – did they still have it? Edge, hunger, heat, grit, spit, the gnashing of teeth necessary to not only compete with their older work but to outdo it? As I have grown older myself I can’t help but feel the odometer wean back, it’s only natural I suppose, I could not judge them. But it had been a while. Did Young Widows remember, and more importantly, did they have something more to say?

From the start, yes – the lead track (and second single) “The Darkest Side” set the terms immediately, a squealing door or hinge crying out like a clarion call, shaking off the rust and summoning all creaking bones to the front. Drummer Jeremey continues to redefine the pocket, the slowhand of deceptive rock drumming, alongside bassist and (backup vocalist) Nick who has crafted a tone that is best vibrated through the entire body while keeping time that feels solid as granite to the player but like shifty sand to the listener. And then guitarist and main vocalist Evan lays it out – “I wanna die / with a smile”, fighting through the tumult of overwhelming emotions, incorporating them, not to eradicate the darkness but to come through it towards a kind of peace, or later on the album, “total fucking clarity.”

They do this with their same tools (fuck yes): the 90s and 00s that Nirvana left behind, gain and overdrive reflected through reverb that rings out like a mirror facing a mirror, tongues bloody from biting wit, songs that seem to unspool at random. These tracks are not the maze, they are the solution, and we follow the winding line, banging our heads.

If anything, Young Widows are tighter than ever, looking back to Old Wounds in that they’re unafraid to to keep an absolute scrunch-faced riff short as necessary, no need for cheap repetition, they’ll ride a line to the end and back until the listener is just comfortable enough to get shaken out when the song drops into another echoed squall. Take “Turned Out Alright,” a kind of sequel to “The Guitar” as a reflection on how we get sucked up into a lifetime of guitar music – a three minute song that spends nearly a third of its time leading up, a chord and drum dance that opens curtains into a dizzying bass stomp, there and back again, letting the reverb wash out and the cymbals ring and settle, before setting up a real ruckus through the end.

I had a fluttering fear for Power Sucker, that Young Widows might tarnish themselves by getting caught up looking back, or perhaps lost while gazing forward, but they’ve threaded the needle. This album is possibly their tightest ever, finding new ways to weave the sounds that bedrock their bellowing without cutting loose their energy or their drive. Age and growth are gifts, despite the threats of nostalgia and the pain of life, and I look forward to my nephew learning this in his own time and at his own speed. His collection may soon include Young Widows, thanks to a meddling uncle (maybe I can start with their Nirvana covers). But beyond that, I’m excited to learn who the Young Widows of his lifetime will become, and how Power Sucker might have influenced them.

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Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.