Young Widows w/The Liverhearts & Yautja: at Exit/In (Nashville, TN) Sun. February 3, 2013

Young Widows w/The Liverhearts & Yautja

Pop/Rock

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick …

Taking cues from Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and other heavy groups that maintain a pop orientation, Louisville’s Young Widows make thick, primal music that is both authentic and palatable to an audience well beyond a narrow subgenre. From their days as a mathcore group, they have held over a fondness for unusual rhythms, which percolate through the dark ambience cultivated around frontman Evan Patterson’s vocals, sometimes bubbling up into a blast of Helmet-style riffage. Their latest effort, In and Out of Youth and Lightness, finds them working with producer-engineer Kevin Ratterman, whose credits include Andrew Bird as well as Louisville hometown heroes Wax Fang and My Morning Jacket. As a team, their work has just the right balance of light and heavy, and is more meditative than theatrical. They share the bill on this tour with Atlanta’s Liverhearts, whose off-kilter math jams reveal an influence from lean, nimble art-school punks like Wire.

—STEPHEN TRAGESER