The past few years have not been easy for Maia Sinaiko and Susanna Thomson, the guitarists, singers and songwriters at the core of Oakland’s Sour Widows. Sinaiko’s partner died from an accidental overdose as the band was coming together. Then Thomson’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, passing away just before the band began recording their debut, Revival of a Friend.
“The album title comes from the painting we used for the record’s cover art,” the friends said, speaking as a duo. “It’s a piece by artist Ben Styer. We thought it fit well with the album’s themes of loss, grief and memorializing people who have passed away.”
Sinaiko and Thomson met as teenagers at Camp Winnarainbow, the performing arts camp in Laytonville. They wrote their first song together there and continued collaborating after they returned home. “As children, we were both deeply inspired by artists such as Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell,” they said. “We took great encouragement from their discographies and philosophies around being artists.”
They decided to start Sour Widows in 2017. After their first gig, they invited drummer Max Edelman to join the band. His rhythmic expertise helped them expand their sound and explore new directions in songwriting. Bass player Timmy Stabler joined up about five years ago.
“We didn’t have this exact album in mind when we started writing,” they continued. “The songs were written over the course of a few years. Some of them wouldn’t exist without the events that transpired in those years, but this is the kind of album we’ve always wanted to make. It’s a long and epic record with long and epic songs.
“Our creative process was wide open,” they said. “We do a mix of writing songs individually, creating songs out of jams and bringing half-finished songs to each other to collaborate on, in terms of song flow and structure.”
After working together on Crossing Over, the self-produced EP they released in 2021, they decided to make an album. With their friend Maryam Qudus (Leyla McCalla and her own spacemoth project) acting as producer and synth player, they went into Oakland’s Tiny Telephone Studio to work on Revival of a Friend.
“The songs on [Revival] are more mature and fleshed out, which was reflected in the recording process,” they said. “Tiny Telephone has high-quality vintage recording equipment. With Maryam there, we didn’t have to run the sessions ourselves, which made it easier to focus on the performance.”
The 10 songs on Revival of a Friend take up a lot of sonic space. The arrangements deal with the verse/chorus structure in an inventive, expansive way, with the tempo changes created by Edleman and Stabler keeping the musical tension high. The emotional lyrics are always upfront and vulnerable.
“Cherish,” a ballad, opens with a slow, fingerpicked hook on electric guitar, with the drums adding dramatic accents. It slowly builds to an emotional climax, as the duo’s harmonies plead for understanding, as they face the feelings of loss they can’t ignore.
A big, twang-heavy guitar line complements the soft, almost whispered, lead vocal on “Initiation,” a eulogy to Thomson’s mother. The lyrics describe the unease generated when dealing with the loss of a loved one.
Sinaiko’s solo vocal opens “I-90,” a description of a road trip taken with a partner who passed away soon afterward. The duo’s harmonies mirror the joy of singing along with a tape of familiar songs as the scenery rolls by outside the open windows of a car.
The harmonies on “Staring into Heaven” describe the warm memories and cold reality that go hand in hand after the passing of a loved one. A long instrumental coda, filled with chiming guitar fills, brings the song to a soothing close.
When they play the songs live, they retain the subtle power that pulls people into the emotions they express. “Our unique experiences in life, as well as our experience in DIY music scenes across the country, have shaped us as people and musicians,” they said.
“Our music is cathartic for us to play, and we hope it’s cathartic for people to listen to,” they continued. “We make music that people who have experienced loss will probably identify with the most. We get good feedback from people who have been through similar hardships. It means a lot to us when these songs resonate with people who have had experiences like ours.”
