Widowspeak

Widowspeak remain purveyors of mood. Whether speaking plainly to the mundane details of modern life, dealing in heartbreak and hooks, or conjuring the sweeping openness of a wide angle landscape, they’re a band ever-concerned with the influence of place and the passage of time on personal experience: the way vivid memories can feel like movies or dreams. Anchored by the creative partnership of singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas, Widowspeak in essence operates as a duo: the two write songs with ear-wormy choruses and big guitar chords, supported by warm and expansive arrangements. But they record (and tour) as a full band.

On stage the dynamics shift seamlessly between drifting ballads and reverb-laden walls of sound, all with a humble and laid-back, Velvets-y approach. Hamilton’s delicate voice and Thomas’s adept guitar playing trade space as lead, amid dusty percussion and ambling bass and piano lines.  To see Widowspeak live is to find the band at their usual and best: striking a masterful and cathartic balance between wide-eyed sweetness and resigned melancholy.