(2020) Widowspeak - Plum


Review:
When it comes to making music that seems breezy but sinks deep into listeners’ ears and minds, few acts are as skillful as Widowspeak. Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas’ fifth album, Plum, reflects just how much their music has ripened over the years. Much like they did before making 2015’s All Yours, before recording this album Hamilton and Thomas worked steady jobs and tended to other projects, including Thomas’ debut album Another Age. Once again, spending time away from Widowspeak paid off: Plum is a beautifully crafted set of songs that are as dreamy as they are grounded in reality. The album’s title track is pure Widowspeak, with a golden hour glow that showcases Thomas’ eloquent yet understated guitars, the delicacy of Hamilton’s songwriting and vocals, and the inspired ways they play off each other. Their chemistry is just as potent, if not more so, when they reflect on late-stage capitalism. On several of the album’s standouts, they bury hard truths in soft, sweet melodies like the pit in a plum. Set to luminous synths, “Breadwinner”‘s lament (“Is this how you measure time?/Vacations you can’t take/Is this how you count the hours?/The ones when you’re awake”) feels immediately relatable to anyone contemplating their work-life balance. On “Money,” the contrast between Hamilton’s voice as she sighs “what a time to be alive” and the song’s driving beat is equally surprising and welcome. While Widowspeak’s music has bordered on being too hazy for its own good, the duo brings it into sharp focus by putting Plum‘s rhythms front and center; the darkly grooving “Amy” and “The Good Ones” add forward momentum without sacrificing any mystique. Thomas and Hamilton sound just as engaging on the album’s closing meditations on acceptance, whether it’s embracing uncertainty (in two languages, no less) on “Jeannie” or the sudden realization of “Y2K.” Taking things as they come is a soft strength that feels very Widowspeak. They seem to become more themselves with each album, and Plum finds them at their most immediate and compelling.





Tracklist:
01-Plum
02-The Good Ones
03-Money
04-Breadwinner
05-Even True Love
06-Amy
07-Sure Thing
08-Jeanie
09-Y2K


Media Report:
Genre: indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits