SPILL NEWS: WIDOWSPEAK ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM, HEADLINE TOUR, AND SHARE LEAD SINGLE “IF YOU CHANGE”

WIDOWSPEAK ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM, HEADLINE TOUR, AND SHARE LEAD SINGLE “IF YOU CHANGE”

CAPTURED TRACKS

On March 17th, NYC duo Widowspeak announced their new album Roses, due out June 5th via Captured Tracks. Lead single “If You Change” captures everything that’s made the long-running group a staying force, from its breezy guitars to the impossibly rich chorus; there’s a timeless quality imbued with the twang of a Lynchian roadhouse band.

On the single, vocalist Molly Hamilton says she “thought about the fear of change, and when things (situations, objects) feel stuck in time because of a fear of ruining them. You always hear ‘mint condition’ as though it is an asset, but it also means that the thing hasn’t been used, lived with, or loved. It never gets to fulfill its destiny.”

The longtime duo of Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas, Roses, arrives as Widowspeak’s seventh album. One of many bands to crop up in a fertile New York City music scene over 16 years ago, they started out shuffling gear between venues, now shuttered (Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio, to name a few), and their practice space in Monster Island Basement (now a Trader Joe’s). Widowspeak is now a married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Robert is a carpenter, Molly a waitress. Roses is populated not with dramatic overtures but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts. Small observations before, during, and after work: the ritual of pouring water for customers, catching a cold on your day off. Daydreaming about winning the lottery, or maybe realizing you already won.

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. It’s quiet there in winter, when the tourists have all gone home. 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.

“Incidentally, one of my favorite childhood books is “The Velveteen Rabbit,” and growing up, we had this VHS copy of Meryl Streep reading it over Ken Burns-esque slow-panned illustrations,” shares Hamilton on the playful video. “It’s sort of burned into my mind. Even now, I can hear her voice saying, “I am real!” My sister ended up getting me a copy of it on vinyl, which is incredible. Maybe I’ve also been thinking about it more now because we have a board book version we read to the baby. But, the point of the story is that only through being loved can something become “real”… and that’s sort of how the video came to be what it is.”

Across the ten tracks that make up Roses, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, vaseline-coated lens. If music can simultaneously be naturalistic and noir, saturated and lush, that is Widowspeak. This is a band that knows how to set a scene.

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. The rough-hewn marks of the tools are still evident, and the noise is kept in.

“Can’t hold too tight or I’ll have nothing, Like a candy melts in your hand.” As the album closer “Hourglass” contemplates the fleeting nature of something, anything, it 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.

Alongside the single and news of the new album, the band has announced a run of US tour dates this Summer. Tickets on-sale this Friday.

Tour Dates

06/16 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
06/18 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
06/19 – Washington, DC – DC9
06/20 – Mount Solon, VA – Red Wing Roots Festival
06/22 – Raleigh, NC – Pour House
06/23 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
06/24 – Nashville, TN – Third Man Blue Room
06/26 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th St. Entry
06/27 – Milwaukee, WI – The Argo
06/28 – Chicago, IL – Schubas
06/30 – Ferndale, MI – Magic Bag
07/01 – Toronto, ON – Sound Garage
07/02 – Montreal, QC – L’Esco
07/03 – Boston, MA – Arts at the Armory
07/30 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
07/31-08/02 – Happy Valley, OR – Pickathon (Festival)
08/04 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill
08/07 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
08/08 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room
08/09 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
08/11 – Santa Fe, NM – Tumbleroot Brewery
08/12 – Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
08/14 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge (Psych Lake City Festival)
08/15 – Boise, ID – Shrine Social Club
08/16 – Spokane, WA – The District

Artist Links

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius