Notes
Album Available: October 14th, 2008 The Pink Widower's ringleader, The Jed, has left behind the melancholic slow songs that were an integral characteristic of his former band, Six Foot Sloth, in favor of juiced up rock that is part Lee Perry, with the stoned out horns intact, part Blue Oyster Cult mystic rock, and all summer good times. "The Enchanted Realm of the Pink Widower" comes out with horns wailing, rhythms shuffling, excellent songcrafting, and funky bass on the first track "Crimson Eyes", and continues with serious groove and tasty guitar licks throughout it's ten song debut. Not content to just get the audience tranced out to low end throb and sweet hooks, the Jed, employs lyrical wit to weave stories of crimson eyed kids, baby elephants, and motorcycle mechanics with emotion and a voice that can woo, spurn, or enchant. The Pink Widower is ready to take you to an Enchanted Realm where Morrissey talks shop with Bob Marley and wizards convene in christian homes. You should check it out. -Features members of Dramady, Six Foot Sloth, Rollerball, Babydollars, and Larry Yes. -Autumn US Tour -Dance Party and Head Banging Williamette Week To hear Jed Allan talk about his new band, Pink Widower (\'I want to write \'get up\' music,\' he says. \'High-life music to move asses and inspire people\'), you\'d be forgiven for imagining the 31-year-old Portlander as a zonked-out hippie instead of a clear-headed, stylishly unkempt man enjoying kombucha and a cigarette on a late summer\'s evening. The dichotomy is fitting for both Allan\'s approach to writing songs for this new project and the loose-limbed yet locked-in style that his bandmates use throughout the one-year-old band\'s debut album, The Enchanted Realm of the Pink Widower (North Pole Records).Many of the tracks feature a laconic reggae groove topped with a honking horn section, but have the clean, streamlined feel of a classic pop song. Others (the steady rumble of \'Christmas Lights\' and the uke and Rhodes piano-inflected \'Let Me See\') take a path similar to that of the group Allan fronted for nine years, Six Foot Sloth.Although Allan understands the associations between and Pink Widower and Six Foot Sloth, he sees the new project as a move past what he deems the \'morose\' music SFS trucked in. \'It was great for me at the time,\' he says, \'because in our lives, we had so much sad shit happen to us. So that\'s what we were into: writing really sad ballads.\'\'I still write from a lost-love perspective,\' he says, pointing to the shuffling track \'Battledogs,\' which contains the lines, \'\'Cause if my head stops working overtime/ That means our hearts won\'t beat as one\' as a key example. He is quick to mention, though, that \'even if there\'s dark stuff lyrically, there\'s usually sun at the end.\'If there\'s any negatives with Pink Widower, in Allan\'s view, it\'s in trying to wrangle his bandmates together for shows, as all of them play in other groups (drummer Gilles and tenor sax player Amanda Mason Wiles with Rollerball, sax player Christine Denkewalter with the Evolutionary Jass Band, and trombonist Toussaint Perrault with Tu Fawning and solo project Babydollar$). Still, \'I trust them so much to make the most of it,\' he says. \'It\'s that kind of music that\'s easy for people to fall into and get into it. It\'s no sweat.\' Portland Mercury Pink Widower-headed by the Jed, formerly of Six Foot Sloth-have picked a damn good time to release their first album of summertime pop gems. With handclaps, horns, shakers, warm keyboards, and the Jed\'s reedy vocals, the band breezily plows through a very Northwestern take on psychedelic pop on The Enchanted Realm of the Pink Widower, which will see the light of [Portland] day in mid-August. \'Let Me See\' begs to be brought along on your next river trip, while \'Baby Elephant\' just knocked back another beer on your porch. The time is ripe to fall in love with this record, so do it before the sun leaves for a