Widow City, out October 9th on Thrill Jockey, seems to start where Friedberger's solo outing of fall 2006, Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School left off, where Mellotron and delay-addled drum machines set the off-kilter tone. Widow City was produced by Matthew Friedberger “over one very snowy, cold winter by Lake Michigan.” Engineered by Bill Skibbe (Sea of Tombs) and Jessica Ruffins (Lake of Dracula, Sea of Tombs) and mixed by John McEntire (Tortoise) at Chicago's Soma Studios, the album (one assumes a play on the windy city, its birthplace), touts its use of a Chamberlin, that tape loop-triggering keyboard made notorious on Revolver and “Strawberry Fields Forever”, as well as David Bowie's Berlin albums.
Quote:
“…the sounds on the tapes are widows in relation to their long lost Husband recorded performances, living on and on, dressed in the audio black that is the lack of high end on these analog tapes. This idea is important to note on this recording, an LP where loss mingles with love, where husbands sit still on their honeymoon, where gurus are shunned, where words of affection are too faint to ever be carried by the winds of Cairo and more.”
The album might also sustain Rehearsing My Choir's nostalgia, the press release noting that “the songs were inspired in part by advertisements from women’s magazines of the early 70’s.”
TRACK LIST:
THE OLD HAG IS SLEEPING
WIDOW CITY
RESTORATIVE BEER
NAVY NURSE
DUPLEXES OF THE DEAD
AUTOMATIC HUSBAND
EX-GURU
JAPANESE SLIPPERS
UNCLE CHARLIE
CABARET OF THE SEVEN DEVILS
RIGHT BY CONQUEST
