Roses: Cherry Red Eco Mix Vinyl LP

Pre-Order Item. Release Date Subject to Change.
Label: Captured Tracks
Release Date: 5th June

Tell you what's under-rated in music - songs just being pretty or cute, a record that makes we want to wear something that catches the wind as I hover my hand over some flowers, stuff that makes me feel giddy love inside and let me tell you, it does not come easy. Widowspeak have hit the sweetness sweet spot with 'Roses' a record that'll have you swooning like Miss Honey when Wormwood skips skips town. 

For those who dig: The Sundays, Mazzy Star and some twanging country with indie jangles. 

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. Celebrity headshots gaze
down like angels in a restaurant. Elsewhere, carnations are pressed in a black book
and dancers pull each other close. Widowspeak is a band that riffs 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. Cars and their driv-
ers serve as a way to talk about codependency. If music can simultaneously be natu-
ralistic and noir, saturated and lush, that is Widowspeak. They’re a band that knows
how to set a scene.
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 Widow-
speak 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. Small ob-
servations 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. Here, love is a way to talk about what drives us, and Wid-
owspeak suggest it can be the whole point. The light that illuminates the dark corners
of a day, a life. A reason to keep going despite the pain it can cause.
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 catalog. One of many bands to crop up in a fertile New
York City music scene, they started out shuffling gear between venues now-since
shuttered and their practice space in Monster Island Basement. Widowspeak is now a
married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Robert is a carpenter, Molly
a waitress.
“Roses” is Widowspeak at its best, drawing on forever influences. 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.
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.