With glowing synths and lyrics about labor and death, the New York duo’s fifth LP is a tastefully small reflection on modern anxieties.
Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas’s first few albums as Widowspeak had a darkness running through them. The Brooklyn duo released their 2011 self-titled debut on Captured Tracks, home of like-minded bedroom jangle bands like Wild Nothing and Beach Fossils. Widowspeak and their counterparts cast a vintage haze to match the sepia-toned filters of early Instagram. Their skillful, moody interpretations of ’70s psychedelia and sad ’90s rock evoked a dreamy sense of yearning, like nostalgia for nothing in particular. Plum, Widowspeak’s fifth LP, is resigned to more modern anxieties. It’s a tastefully small album, breezy and immediate, written and recorded before the pandemic. The band focus less on collaging retro influences and more on introducing new elements into their palette.
Plum is a memento mori painted in rich hues: Fruit ripens and shrivels. Our jobs sustain us and kill us. Time is our most valuable asset and we waste it away. Glowing synth notes and guitars give “Breadwinner” the hypnotic coziness of Mazzy Star as Hamilton describes a lover’s daily slog, working late hours and longing for pure, uncomplicated romance. Acknowledgments of the past appear as faint, cloudy memories. “Amy” simmers like a desert mirage, a pulsating bass backing Hamilton’s breathy coo as she sings about a silhouette, maybe a girl she once knew: “Summer fruit, cherry tattoo/So easy-going, like your mom was there for you.”
But Widowspeak’s musings on envy and exhaustion aren’t complaints. They don’t bemoan our lives’ impermanence. Plum wavers between calm acceptance and a bright downward spiral, chasing fires before they fizzle. Hamilton swaddles reflections on labor and death in honeyed tones. “Try not to see it as a curse/You think that things are getting worse/The only body I was given/The only life that you’re living,” she whispers. “Even true love; you can’t take it with you.” Existential panic has the hum of meditation.
Widowspeak flirt with a certain strain of retail indie rock, the kind that plays softly over racks of bohemian-inspired tunics and overpriced candles—the equivalent of a stylishly distressed Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. But instead of feeling trapped in vague approximations of ’60s and ’70s aesthetics, Widowspeak’s vibes come with a sharp vision. Among the inspirations for Plum, the band cite YouTube playlists of pop songs remixed to sound like they’re playing in abandoned malls, David Byrne’s kooky 1986 film True Stories, and the celebrated 20th-century food writer M.F.K. Fisher. But you can also hear subtle flickers of the duo’s contemporaries: Big Thief’s heavy emotional undertow and deft guitar work echo through Thomas’s fingerpicked melodies, and “Even True Love” offers a shadier take on Real Estate’s sunny acoustics.
Plum stretches far beyond a boutique clothing store, but it doesn’t take enough risks to really widen Widowspeak’s scope. Some riffs nag when they intend to mesmerize, and not all the clichés land. Perhaps the familiar refrain of “Money”—it “doesn’t grow on trees”—could’ve worked if the spindly guitar had a stronger driving rhythm, or maybe the strums would’ve been more effective beneath a more novel quip about living to work. By the time Hamilton suggests that we “tune out platitudes like these” in the last verse, her advice falls flat. The sleepy arrangements of the final two tracks, “Jeannie” and “Y2K,” fade into the background. But loud isn’t their aim, and Plum’s special, big moments stand out against the quiet. Widowspeak’s capitalist critique becomes a mirror of the chaos that permeates our daily rhythm—buying, selling, making, doing.
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