Widowspeak – Almanac

Lush was the first word that came to mind when I started listening to Almanac, Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas’ second album as Widowspeak. The duo has filled each and every song to the brim with a forest of enchanted guitars and ghostly, reverb-drenched drums. But not even a proverbial jungle of beautiful instrumentation can hide contrived songwriting, and Almanac will leave you with nothing more than a fleeting sense of what could have been.

Widowspeak are kind of like shoegaze-lite; songs like “The Dark Age” are built around the kinds of loopy chord progressions and ethereal lyricism that My Bloody Valentine built an empire on. But while most Shoegaze acts hide simplistic songwriting behind outre production or cataclysmic instrumentation, Widowspeak opt for a more direct approach, ending up with an album that’s more Mumford and Sons than it is Spacemen 3.  In the revealing light of its own crispness, Almanac falls apart on a song by song basis, with writing that never seems to go much deeper than Songwriting 101.

Though the reconciliation of 21st century shoegaze with symphonic country pop doesn’t play out here in any unique fashion, there are moments on Almanac that do stray into legitimately interesting territory. “Dyed in the Wool,” for example, which evokes all the forlorn emptiness of a cold Midwestern town. This song is less immediately attributable to an established musical movement, and that ambiguity pays off to such an extent that the song actually sounds full-bodied and heartfelt.

In terms of the its mood, its production, and especially in terms of the space each instrument inhabits, Almanac is very similar to Grizzly Bear’s 2012 release Shields. While Shields is incisive and murky, and its songs both relentless and jarring, most songs on Almanac sounds as though Widowspeak did not want anything distracting from the lushness of the instrumentation, and so opted to keep the surprises to a minimum. Hamilton’s vocals are timid and sound out of place against the unrelenting backdrop of instruments.

Almanac is an album of moments, and there are some glorious ones: a descending synth line on “Thick as Thieves” sends shivers down my spine, and “Ballad of the Golden Hour” has one of the slickest and most satisfyingly starstruck slide guitar parts this side of The Alman Brothers’ country classic “Jessica.”

I do appreciate what Widowspeak are trying to do, to the extent that they are trying to negotiate a space for shoegaze and big country pop ballads to play together. But the duo should not approach songwriting as a chore necessary to fill space in inspired production. All in all, Almanac is not an effort to be taken lightly, and while it may deserve serious attention, it is not an album I expect to be returning to. Adventurous readers: listen with a nice pair of headphones, and with a big grain of salt.

2.5/5 bars