Widowspeak - Roses Widowspeak

An album called ‘Roses’ would be concerned with romantic gestures. Across the ten tracks that make up the seventh and newest Widowspeak record, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, Vaseline-coated lens. Candles burn inside red glass as lovers get close in a leather booth.
Widowspeak are a band that riff on big emotions without being too self-serious. The sweetness, even silliness, of an extended limerent phase that becomes as all-consuming as a pulpy trade paperback.
These songs use intimate moments to talk about deeper heartaches: the restlessness inherent in modern existence, waiting around for something to happen. Or, feeling at odds with playing a role in your own life. ‘Roses’ might be the most romantic Widowspeak record, but it’s also the most deeply realist: the stage is set not with dramatic overtures but the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts.
Widowspeak are one of the most prolific and hardworking bands going, bubbling just under the surface. Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas are the core of the group and its songwriters, and they have honed their sound across sixteen years and an impressively consistent catalogue.
Maybe time has given Widowspeak the ability to grow slowly; ‘Roses’ is unpruned and more beautiful for it; left a little wild as it stretches its new growth in all directions. From the opening chords of ‘The Hook’ you can hear how far they’ve come: the road is open, the sky clears. The band feel at ease, and they take their time. They recorded the album last January at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island Hydra: a studio in an old house tucked into the village’s steep hills. Longtime touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond serve here as the players. ‘Roses’ was then taken home and slowly, lightly tinkered with, before being deftly mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.
‘Roses’ is Widowspeak at their best, drawing on forever influences. There’s dream and power pop, a little Stones, maybe some Petty, open and languid ballads with the twang of a Lynchian roadhouse band… Perhaps you hear REM, Yo La Tengo or Cat Power. A little Neil Young in Hamilton’s references to working at the diner. The magic of the band is, still and always, the interplay between Molly and Robert in their two leading roles: her languid, textured voice and his visceral guitar playing. And as producer, Robert captures the ephemeral magic of a band finding a song in the studio: something that still bears traces of the directness of Molly’s voice memos and the dense guitar tapestries of the demos.
Album closer ‘Hourglass’ contemplates the fleeting nature of something, anything and illustrates what is most true about Widowspeak - at the heart of it, their music is special because it is real: most of all for the people making it. Fragile and temporary, and worthwhile… like love itself.
LP in single jacket with 12” x 24” insert.