Photos and Review by NOTES FROM VIVACE
– LOS ANGELES – Sour Widows brought their vibrant and intricate sound to the Zebulon to celebrate their recent album release, Revival of A Friend. The band played two July shows in support of the late June release, one in their hometown of San Francisco and the other in Los Angeles. In September, they’ll go on a more extensive tour in support of the album.
The band shook hands, initiated by guitarist / vocalist Maia Sinaiko, who reached out to each member. The setlist started off with the first five songs from the album.
The band has an eclectic taste in music composition that occasionally gets combined all into one song. In fact, at times, it tricked out their own fan base who would cheer a song before it had even concluded. A perfect example of this was “Witness.” The music started with guitars and bass overpowering the vocals of guitarist / vocalist Susanna Thomson.
The vocals rose in power until Thomson and Sinaiko were yelling out the lyrics and then without notice the vocals went silent and the band switched the sound into a dissonant riff. The crowd yelled their approval for the song and Thomson maybe had a smile that could be read as a, “We got you all.” The song concluded with the trailing poetic lyrics, “The moments repeat and feed back into and endlessly.” The audience caught on to the lingering of the music and started to wait until one of the band members indicated that the next song was upcoming before cheering.
Sour Widows was formed in 2017 by Sinaiko and Susanna Thomson. Drummer Max Edelman joined shortly thereafter. During the seven years as a band, Sinaiko and Thomson have suffered through many personal tragedies. The band’s bio reads, “Sinaiko lost a partner to accidental overdose just before the band began. Thomson’s mother was diagnosed with a rare cancer, which she lived with for four years before passing away in June 2021. As they prepared to enter Oakland’s Tiny Telephone in 2023 to make an album partly of songs about navigating those losses and the lives they shaped, more troubles mounted, including a traumatic breakup and Thomson’s father’s sudden cancer diagnosis.”
Their songs often clocked in at around the 6 minutes mark. One such song was “Initiation” that had heads bobbing to the poetic charm that had vocals at whisper level. The lingering of the music helped weave a spiritual beauty.
The band had some merch to sell and were especially gleeful to promote their car bumper sticker that read, “Too Stupid for New York. Too Ugly for LA.” “We’re from San Francisco, you see,” was the explanation for that clever slogan.
As the band closed out their set, the crowd demanded an encore, but they were unfortunately up against a hard stop for Zebulon’s traditional Saturday night dance party. As an appropriate replacement, the crowd made a beehive to the merch table to form a lengthy line.
Opening up the night was Emily Yacina and Emelia Austin. Emily Yacina’s pop / folk sounds were mixed in with killer vocals. As a side note, Yacina’s synth player had the only setlist and could be seen helping coordinate the set with the rest of the band by indicating what song was coming up next.
Emilia Austin of Gal Pal put aside the more shoegaze sounds of that band for a singer-songwriter set that included sonic duet strumming of her acoustic guitar along with an assist from a friend playing electric guitar. She mentioned that when she lived in Santa Cruz, Sour Widows and her would occasionally play on the same venue bill.
Sour Widows setlist: Big Dogs, Revival, Witness, I-90, Initiation, Cherish, Mayflies, Staring Into Heaven/Shining, Spit
Emily Yacina setlist: Only, Trick Of The Light, DB Cooper, Siren Song, Bleachers, Malibu, Free // Forgotten, Katie, Faraway
Emelia Austin setlist: Forever / Never, Letting Go, Goodbye Indiana, All I Ever Wanted, Shifting Weather, Two Chord, Waiting
