True Widow

Texas' trio True Widow blended the idioms of post-rock, shoegaze and slocore on True Widow (End Sounds, 2008). Most of the album consists of litanies sung in a moribund tone. Songs like AKA, Sunday Driver and Bleeder (sung by Nicole Estill) have a quality that is highly hypnotic and almost stoned, like a slow-motion remix of a Neil Young jam. This style reaches a peak of pathos with the martial and funereal tempo of Corpse Master. They bring out the melodramatic riffs that have been so far smothered in the nine-minute closer, K.R., Occasionally, the idea moves closer to R.E.M.'s existential ballads (Flat Black) and occasionally it degenerates into John Lennon-ian languor ((i>All You Need). They actually fare better with the slightly more upbeat and romantic Duelist (driven by dual male-female vocal harmonies).

The male/female harmonies of guitarist Dan Phillips and bassist Nicole Estill yielded more emotional results on As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth (Kemado, 2011), whose Jackyl and Skull Eyes revisited dream-pop and shoegaze (with "NH" and "Boaz" leaning on the stoner-side of things), while the nine-minute slocore dirge Doomseer drifted towards psychedelic anemia. The idea of dreamy slow-motion stoner and grunge fare was pure genius, packaging two iconic styles of the 1990s into one simple product for the Facebook generation.