New Music: Widowspeak "Everything is Simple"

The Jacket will hit physical and virtual shelves on March 11.

Well, happy freaking new year. 

I didn't expect such a treasure so early in 2022. But Widowspeak have already hit us with what is going to be a strong contender for Most Listened to Song of 2022, with their release of "Everything is Simple" off the forthcoming album, The Jacket.¹

Time is weird in its elasticity anyway. The days are long and the years are short some may say. But Covid time operates on a different plane. I swear it feels like Plum, the group's fifth LP, came out sometime last year. I know it didn't but it still feels that way, and the release of new material and a new album feels like a quick turnaround and an even more pleasant surprise. 

And this song. Oh, this song. 

Back in October, I caught the pair -- then a touring foursome -- at Reggie's in Wilmington, NC, and they played Everything somewhere in the middle of their set. That one floored me as much for how good it was as for the questions it left implanted in my head. Is that new material or something from their back catalog that just isn't registering?

That question haunted me the rest of the show and all the way home (until I could hopefully pull it up on Spotify). Alas, the hurried trip through the Widowspeak discography turned up nothing. I let it go. Other music came along in the days that followed to distracted me. It always does. Almost always.

So I forgot about that song I couldn't place in October. I forgot about it until this morning when I was prompted about new music from Widowspeak. "Okay," I told myself. "I'll give this a whirl."

The first chord hits. 

THAT'S THE SONG!!!!

Indeed it was. Question answered. It was that same typically Americana-tinged Widowspeak with that low rumble of a repeated Robert Earl Thomas guitar riff to boot. Only now, from the studio with a restorative piano part that drifts in and out throughout the tune delivering some additional emotional oomph. As if it needed any extra. Molly Hamilton honed her vocal craft in new ways (to me) on Plum. There was more patience to that delicate voice on the 2020 release that returns in spades here on Everything, tying it all together.  

The video for "Everything is Simple" conjures up a western motif, and you can hear that, too. But this one hits -- because of that riff and its pace -- like something emanating from some dusty blues dive somewhere out on the lonesome plains. There's a tension there. That sludgy guitar part feels like something struggling to escape some hardscrabble life with a piano line that intermittently pops in to goad it into persisting and Hamilton's vocals there to ruefully tell the tale.

It is some combination and one hell of a musical gift to kick off a new year.

The Jacket is out on March 11 on Captured Tracks.

Notes:

¹ There's some wisdom to releasing a banger of a single on just the fourth day of the year. 

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