Widowspeak

Band: Widowspeak Saturday 5 December Venue: Hus 7 Doors 20.00 Live from approx. 21.00 Age restriction: 18+, read more about the age restriction: https://slakthusen.se/aldersgr…

An album called “Roses” would be about romantic gestures. Across the ten songs that make up Widowspeak’s seventh and latest record, intimate spaces and the various stages of love are captured through a nostalgic, slightly hazy filter. Candles burn in red glass as lovers draw close in a leather-upholstered booth. Celebrity portraits gaze down like angels in a restaurant. Elsewhere, carnations are pressed in a black book and dancers pull each other close. Widowspeak are a band who play with big emotions without taking themselves too seriously. The sweetness, even the slight silliness, of a prolonged infatuation that becomes as all-consuming as a pulp paperback. Cars and their drivers serve as a way to talk about codependency. And old love is worn in, soft as an old T-shirt. If music can be both naturalistic and noir, saturated and lush, then it is Widowspeak. They are a band who know how to set a scene.

These songs use intimate moments to speak of deeper heartaches: the restlessness inherent in modern life, waiting around for something to happen. Or the feeling of not quite fitting the role you play in your own life. “Roses” may be Widowspeak’s most romantic album, but it is also their most realistic: the scene is set not through dramatic gestures but against a backdrop of everyday details and repetitions. Small observations before, during and after work: the ritual of pouring water for guests, catching a cold on your day off. Daydreaming about winning the lottery, or perhaps realising you already have. Here, love becomes a way to talk about what drives us, and Widowspeak suggest it might be the whole point. The light that illuminates the dark corners of the day, of life. A reason to keep going despite the pain it can cause. As the title track says: Not every thorn will prick you, but you still feel the first. And now you don’t grow roses because that one still hurts… I want to be the one.

Widowspeak are one of the most prolific and hardest-working bands around, constantly bubbling just beneath the surface. Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas form the core of the group and are its songwriters, and they have honed their sound over sixteen years and an impressively consistent catalogue. Much has happened in that time: for them, for everyone. As one of many bands to emerge from a thriving New York music scene, they began by hauling equipment between now-closed venues (Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio, to name a few) and their rehearsal space in Monster Island Basement (now a Trader Joe’s). The highs and lows of a long career mean chaotic stretches as travelling musicians criss-crossing North America, flying out for gigs in São Paulo or Guadalajara, and seven-week European tours… followed by years of downtime in between, reflecting on the power of slowly building a body of work. Widowspeak are now a married couple who work regular jobs during their quieter periods. Robert is a carpenter, Molly a waitress.

Perhaps time has given Widowspeak the ability to grow slowly; “Roses” is unpruned and all the more beautiful for it – a little overgrown as it stretches its new growth in every direction. From the opening chords of “The Hook”, you can hear how far they have come: the road lies open, the sky is clearing. The band sound relaxed and take their time. They recorded the album in January last year at Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island of Hydra: a studio in an old house nestled in the village’s steep hills. It is quiet there in winter, once the tourists have gone home. Long-standing touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond play on the record. “Roses” was then brought home and slowly, carefully refined, before being skilfully mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.

“Roses” is Widowspeak at their best, with clear influences that have always been there. There is dream pop and power pop, a little Stones, perhaps a little Petty, spacious, slow ballads with a tone that brings to mind a roadhouse band from a Lynch film… Perhaps you can hear REM, Yo La Tengo or Cat Power. A little Neil Young in Hamilton’s references to working in a diner. The band’s magic lies, as always, in the interplay between Molly and Robert in their two leading roles: her slow, richly textured voice and his physical guitar playing. And as producer, Robert captures the fleeting magic of a band finding a song in the studio: something that still bears traces of the immediacy of Molly’s voice notes and the densely woven guitars of the demos. The raw tool marks are still visible; the noise is allowed to remain.

“Can’t hold on too tight, then I’ll have nothing left, like a sweet melting in your hand.” As the album’s closing track, “Hourglass”, reflects on how fleeting everything is, it illustrates the truest thing about Widowspeak. At heart, their...