Last week in an almost entirely empty H&M in downtown Chicago,, a few teenagers milled about the section marked SALE, perusing inexpensive chic clothes marketed directly at them. Over the speakers, sandwiched between The Weeknd and a certain Tik Tok song, played Widowspeak’s “Even True Love”. That single, the most recent from Widowspeak’s fifth album Plum, is not especially poppy, or even an outlier on its own mood-favored album, but it does offer a smooth and modern take on alt-culture, something appealing enough to meld into the background and original enough to catch someone’s ear.
The rest of Plum lives up to that ethos, focusing on bright dream-pop and sunny, twinkling guitars and making for an immediately approachable album. After 2017’s hazy and drugged out detour Expect the Best, Plum represents a return to 2015’s breezy All Yours and a culmination of most of their work up until now. While in the past Widowspeak has always been pleasant and often memorably so, on Plum the band has found a unique sound, set apart from their peers and distinctive enough to carry their memorable melodies past their initial pleasantries.
Throughout the album, Widowspeak find success in building their sound around their influences, instead of the other way around. Singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton’s voice, still smoky and lascivious is front and center like always, creating, along with guitarist Robert Earl Thomas’ distinctive tone, a common thread to string together all those different allusions. While the title track elicits the laidback shimmer of Real Estate, “Money” plows ahead with an intro evoking Tame Impala’s early cymbal-heavy circular guitar riffs and on “The Good Ones”, the band pulls equally from The Beta Band and Anton Newcombe’s collaborations with the similarly breathy Tess Parks.
Despite the disparity, all the added inspiration helps to heighten the strengths of Hamilton’s compositions, giving them a springboard for the band to jump off of. Widowspeak have always pushed slightly farther and farther from their endearing debut, but have never sounded this confident. Plum is a great album, one that is professional without losing its beauty, ambitious within their discography and undoubtedly one of the year’s best.
