Music > Album Reviews

WIDOWSPEAK – THE JACKET

10/03/22

This album is more proof – as if I need it – that however voraciously I devour music, I will never find everything that I want to listen to. See, The Jacket is the sixth album from Widowspeak but the first time that I have heard them. 

The core duo are of Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas are joined by original drummer Michael Stasiak, bassist JD Sumner and keys, and Michael Hess on keys to create a gentle, melancholy take on dreampop. There are elements of Velvet Underground and Nico, if Nico had been a singer, along with Mazzy Star and Cowboy Junkies. For me, though, the closest comparison would be the wonderful work Vaselines’ Frances McKee did both solo and with Suckle. 

The Jacket started life as the story of an embroiderer joining a covers band, entering a relationship with a bandmate and leaving normality behind for a life of touring. Of course, things don’t work out and the protagonist ends up back where things began. More abstract than that original story, this remains a loose concept album of sorts. Unlike grandiose, overblown concept albums of the past, each song stands up outside the narrative arc and this is a fine collection of literate and, dare I say, mature rock.

8/10

Released 11th March 2022