Much of Widowspeak’s forthcoming album, “Expect The Best”, was written after singer Molly Hamilton returned to the town of her youth, Tacoma, Washington. It’s perhaps fitting then that it a record that seems to deal heavily in self-examination and exploring the feeling of being adrift in a rudderless world.
On their newest album for Brooklyn record label Captured Tracks, Widowspeak use familiar aesthetics as a narrative device, a purposeful nostalgic backdrop for songs. Sonically, they exist somewhere in the overlap between somber indie rock, dream pop, slow-core and their own invented genre, “cowboy grunge.” At the heart of the band, there is a palpable duality, a push and pull between the delicate and the deliberate: the contrast of lead singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton with her strikingly beautiful voice and poignant melodies with the terrestrial reality of being a four-piece rock band. These songs sound like the dark bars and rock clubs they were imagined for just as much as the bedrooms where they were written. “Expect the Best” sees Widowspeak finding their greatest balance between opposing forces: darkness and light, quiet and loud, tension and calm.
Expect The Best, is the band’s first album recorded as a four piece, due out next week, and ahead of that release, Widowspeak have shared the stunning new single, The Dream. Many of the hallmarks of earlier recordings, the dusty twanging lead guitar lines and Molly Hamilton’s world-weary vocals, remain, but Widowspeak sound fuller and more ambitious than ever. Cinematic strings soar into The Dream, creating a perfect backdrop to the beautiful vocal delivery, as Molly seems to question her life choices, repeating the line, “isn’t that the dream?”, as if trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. The album title might tell us to expect the best, and listening to a track as good as The Dream, how could you expect anything else?
Expect The Best is out August 25th on Captured Tracks Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 