Widowspeak share track from ‘All Yours’

Widowspeak share track ""Dead Love (So Still)"" from their forthcoming release 'All Yours, out on September 4th

Widowspeak’s new album All Yours drops September 4th via Captured Tracks. Today, the band has given us another hint of what’s to come. The duo has shared the track “Dead Love (So Still)”. The song is about a relationship the band’s Molly Hamilton had while she was a teenager, “I wrote an early version of this song when I was 19,” she explained. “It was one of those naive situations where I thought I was with someone and he didn’t, but the energy and emotion I’d invested in our non-relationship still made its inevitable end feel significant. The mood [of the album version] is a lot more lighthearted than the first. I’ve had so many more experiences since then that require letting things go, and I’m a lot more okay with closed doors that I used to be.”

“Dead Love (So Still)” is the third song the band have leaked from their upcoming record, already we’ve been given a taste of what’s in store when the band premiered “Girls” a track they describe as “dream-country” and compliment their sound writing “….they bring two very divergent styles together into a cohesive whole.” The track is about self doubt and falling into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Pitchfork note “The track’s unhurried pace, marked by softly unwinding guitars and an optimistic, sprightly through line, makes it clear that Hamilton is not feeling an ounce of panic-that she is, in fact, coming to terms with her jealousy or self-doubt-because on the other side of the coin can be inspiration.”

Since they came on the scene five years ago, the band has seen many permanent changes: new lineups, new environments. Instead of bringing additional permanent members into the fold after the departure of its founding drummer, the band was whittled down to a duo, a lineup which has remained constant since 2012. After releasing a second LP, Almanac, and The Swamps EP (both in 2013), Molly and Rob left Brooklyn for the (quite literally) greener pastures of the Catskills/Hudson Valley region. They found a house they could play music in. They got a dog.

And they took their damn time making All Yours. For one, the conceptual process of writing Almanac and The Swamps had been creatively draining. They focused on other things: Molly went back to school, Rob took a job at a Catskills hotel. They wrote leisurely, from shared voice memos and late night jams in the living room. As a result of writing down what came naturally, without any overarching vision, the lyrics on All Yours are largely unadorned, the songs connected only by the forgivingly vague theme of “moving on”.

Appropriately, the band chose to work again with Jarvis Taveniere, who produced their self-titled debut in 2011. They also enlisted him and drummer Aaron Neveu (both of whom play in Woods) as the studio rhythm section. The presence of Taveniere and Neveu contributes a groove that wasn’t there previously, and there’s a few other new things: the swell of strings at critical moments, and for the first time, voices beyond Molly’s own. We finally get to hear Rob sing in the earnestly laid-back “Borrowed World.” Members of psych outfit Quilt contribute harmonies and keys throughout the record, most notably in “My Baby’s Gonna Carry On”, and “Cosmically Aligned”.

Tour Dates

09/03 – New York, NY – Rocks Off Concert Cruise (Record Release Show)*
10/02 – San Francisco, CA – Culture Collide Festival @ Swedish American Hall
10/09 – Boston, MA – Unitarian Universalist Church
10/10 – Kingston, NY – O+ Positive Festival
10/11 – Toronto, ON – Silver Dollar
10/12 – Ann Arbor, MI – Bling Pig
10/13 – Chicago, IL – Chop Shop
10/14 – St. Louis, MO – Luminary Arts
10/15 – Norman, OK – Opolis
10/16 – Dallas, TX – Foundry
10/17 – Austin, TX – Lamberts
10/18 – New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa
10/19 – Atlanta, GA – Drunken Unicorn
10/20 – Asheville, NC – Mothlight
10/21 – Chapel Hill, NC – Cat’s Cradle
10/22 – Washington, DC – Comet Ping Pong

*09/03 w/ John Andrews and The Yawns

Advertisement

Looking for something new to listen to?

Sign up to our all-new newsletter for top-notch reviews, news, videos and playlists.