Widowspeak have been at this for sixteen years now, and "Roses" sounds like a band that knows exactly what it is. Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas, married and working day jobs in their off-season, made this one last January in a quiet studio on the Greek island Hydra. Longtime touring players came in, then Alex Farrar mixed it at Drop of Sun and Greg Obis mastered it in Chicago. The result is ten tracks of dream pop and slowcore with a cosmic country twang, open and unhurried. Hamilton's voice stays languid and textured while Thomas's guitar cuts through, and the whole thing feels like it was left a little wild, rough edges intact.
The songs circle around love in its everyday forms: waiting tables, catching a cold, daydreaming about the lottery. There's a Stones-ish looseness to some of it, a little Petty and Yo La Tengo in the air. "The Hook" opens with the road opening up, and the title track admits that roses still hurt even when you stop growing them. The closer "Hourglass" is about how anything good is fragile and temporary. It is not a neat record. It is a real one.
People who liked Widowspeak's earlier work will find more of what they came for. Fans of dream pop, slowcore, and the sort of alt-country that plays in a Lynchian roadhouse should give it a spin. It rewards the kind of listening that lets a song settle rather than demanding immediate hooks.
