We’ve been waiting four years for new Widower to play on repeat. Sustaining ourselves with their self-titled debut EP, whose five songs we must’ve listened to at least a thousand times. It remains, to this day, one of the PNW’s great under-appreciated gems, still compelling after too many listens to really keep count. With his first full-length on the way this winter, we are hopeful Widower and Kevin Large, the gifted song writer behind these songs, will no longer be living in the shadows of his sadness or his successful Tom Petty cover band, American Girls / Petty Party.

“Oh Catherine, my Catherine”, the first track off of Widower’s Fool Moon, shines with the same promise and skillfully penned lyrics of the debut EP, plus four years of growth. Large is a master of alliterating rhyme schemes, singing of “tequila tears in a taxi cab” and “long-stemmed loneliness” —  somehow singing about all the  country cliches without a cliche in sight. Large’s phrasing is the kind that makes other song-writers and poets exclaim, “why didn’t I think of that!” Few songwriters are more evocative with so few words, but Large makes us feel all the feelings with his sparse poetry and enveloping orchestration.

“Some growing pains never go away, they only keep you up at night.” Surely the new Widower, wearing wounds as if they were jewels,  is the kind of pain, a hurt so good, that will keep us up at night. But after four years of waiting, you won’t hear us complain of a few sleepless nights with these songs.

You can hear and download “Oh Catherine, my Catherine” over at Widower’s Bandcamp.  We’ll be adding it to the repeating Widower playlist which has kept us warm the last three winters, as we wait for more.

p.s. Those pitch perfect female vocals coupling Large’s? That’s none other than Kaylee Cole, whose voice will grace the entire record.