
***NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! To say that WIDOWSPEAK is a Northwest band is to tell a halftruth. After all they formed in a Brooklyn apartment thousands of miles to the east, and their guitarist has never even seen the Pacific Ocean. There are aspects of the band's sound—abrasive guitar hooks, immediate drumming, and incessant codas—that speak to living in a big city. But there's also a dreary sparseness, a David Lynch-esque darkness, culled from the other members’ native Washington. The band’s skeletal sound begins with ROBERT EARL THOMAS’ rust-belt guitar parts lending a restless, sinister edge to MOLLY HAMILTON’s subdued melodies and soft vocal style. Recorded at Rear House with JARVIS TAVENIERE of Woods, Widowspeak documents the band’s inaugural year. The resulting record offers an eerie ambience, at times channeling 1950s jukebox pop, at others, 1960s psychedelia. While garnering comparisons to slow-moving 1990s acts such as Mazzy Star or Cat Power, Widowspeak have defined a sound that's earnestly nostalgic, and increasingly confident. Even so, these are songs about heartache. They are songs about homesickness, about longing for pine forests, reckless youth, and dark nights in strange cities.