March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, and this year in between we’ll be treated to a new album from Widowspeak. The Brooklyn duo of singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas have announced their sixth studio album, The Jacket, set for March 11 release via Captured Tracks. The LP’s lead single is a sidewinding indie-folk track called “Everything is Simple,” and it’s billed to be about shifting perspectives in complicated situations.
Listen to it below, or head to the rodeo and watch the OTIUM-directed music video.
“At the beginning of something (a relationship, a project, a job, a new place) you have this very pure feeling toward it,” say Widowspeak about the song. “Everything feels less complicated because you’re oriented wholly toward that potential. It’s undefined, and that makes it easier to understand, because you can’t see the problems yet. As time goes on, you learn more, you experience more, and you see where the limitations exist: Not even necessarily ones imposed upon you, but where you draw your own lines. Maybe you can’t see what was holding you back until it’s in the past, and by then others’ perspectives contradict your own.”
They add: “Everyone is constructing their own versions of reality. The song was originally going to feed into the drama of the imaginary band, but it’s about our own band too. I was thinking about how I’m an inherently unreliable narrator about my own life, and at the same time maybe there are no ‘true’ stories.”
That bit about the imaginary band is a key one, as that is a central theme in The Jacket, Widowspeak’s sixth studio effort. The duo hits the road in April for select southeast dates with Clairo (Miami, Orlando, and twice in Atlanta), and a headline 2022 tour will be announced later on.
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