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SXSW showcase review: Grass Widow at Red 7
In less than 20 minutes on Thursday night, San Francisco all-girl trio Grass Widow took the indoor stage at Red 7, served up a frantic offering of eight droning psych-punk songs, and then stepped down amid calls for more.
Formed in 2007 and made up of three early twenty-somethings, Grass Widow is a fairly young band, and it shows in their stage presence and playing styles. Each member kept her eyes cast down to her instrument for almost the entire performance, and only drummer Lillian Maring showed any semblance of energy, as she kept urgent time through each song with variations on the same surf-punk rhythm. Raven Mahon’s playing also felt a little stilted, as she stabbed out lead lines and chord progressions on the downbeat with jagged pauses, but the lack of fluidity just added to the tense drive of the music.
But the three-part vocal arrangements really made the music. As Mahon chugged out hollow, reverb-heavy riffs and bassist Hannah Lew thumped along, each member stepped up the microphone to throw a different melody into the mix. Sometimes they’d sing in sync, sometimes one would drive the lyrics while the others oooh’d and aaah’d, and once they all just spouted vocal filler for an entire song. But more often than not, they’d each just toss their own words and melodies into the mix.
They’ll have to move beyond that single surf-punk rhythm to create any sense of variation in their music, but for their quick, crowd-pleasing showcase, no one seemed to mind.
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