Grass Widow – Past Time Album Review

Grass Widow primarily play an anonymous brand of surf-tinged garage rock, and the ten tracks that make up Past Time do not stray far from that foundation. However, the group is adept at adding just enough textural variance to keep the songs from becoming too tedious and stifling — most notably by way of their clean, contrapuntal vocal harmonies. The occasional orchestral flourish, such as in “Uncertain Memory” and “Give Me Shapes,” also serves to break up the sonic stagnation. Structurally, the songs tend to cover a lot of melodic ground, rarely signifying any verse-chorus distinctions as they rush on to often abrupt endings. While this may make a song more interesting in its own right, stringing ten together has the effect of lessening the impression left on a listener, as any moment could have occurred in any song, and the album appears hazy, in retrospect.

Running at just over 26 minutes, Past Time seems to end before the listener can key in to the more subtle nuances that differentiate one track from the next. The sound Grass Widow put out, though, is pretty damn good, if you can remember it.