Widowspeak

30 May, 2024

I was really looking forward to seeing Widowspeak. I love their recordings. However, I am not sure if it was because I decided to try upstairs at Lafayette and felt disconnected from the performance, but I found the music beautifully unengaging.

I had a very similar experience with Mazzy Star. While the music is beautiful and floaty, with nice vocals from Molly Hamilton, it all felt a bit similar after an hour and made me sleepy. I don’t know why dreamy shoegaze doesn’t work for me live. I guess if I was closer to the front, I would have found it interesting when Robert Earl Thompson occasionally let loose with the guitar injecting a momentary forward movement to the songs. But even when there was an injection of energy, as with other shoegaze bands, everyone else in the band was just rooted to the same spot.

This is one of those times where I was in a very, very small minority. Everyone else was completely wrapped up in the performance and this was clearly my own very personal experience to this music genre. Their music is very beautiful. I don’t see how they could create the dreamy sound with a frantic performance. The fact that I’ve experienced this with other shoegazey bands, means I clearly have a problem simply losing myself in the music. This is a problem with me, not Widowspeak.

Set List