Tag: Hydra Greece

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Widowspeak Share Lush and Mesmerizing “No Driver”

New York-based indie outfit Widowspeak — Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas — are one of many bands to crop up in the busy local scene around the time I started this site, almost 16 years ago. They started out shuffling their gear between now, long-shuttered — and deeply beloved — venues like Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio and a lengthy list of others, and their practice space at Monster Island Basement, which now is a Trader Joe’s. New York has fucking changed, y’all. Speaking of changes: the duo is now a married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Thomas is a carpenter, Hamilton a waitress.

Recently, the duo announced that their highly-anticipated seventh album, Roses will be released June 5, 2026 through Captured Tracks. Deeply informed by their respective day jobs, Roses isn’t populated with dramatic overtures, but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts. There’s the small observations before, during and after work: the ritual-like act of pouring water or coffee for customers, the bemusement and frustration of catching a cold on your only day off. Maybe you’re daydreaming about your life if you won the lottery — or maybe realizing that you already won.

The 10-song Roses was recorded last January at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek Island of Hydra, a studio located in an old house, tucked into the village’s steep hills. During the winter, without the rush of tourists, it’s quiet. Longtime touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond were the session backing band.

The album’s material was then taken home and slowly, lightly tinkered with before being mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.

Throughout the album, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, almost sepia-toned, vaseline coated lens. As always, the beating heart of their work is the interplay between Hamilton’s languid, dreamy and textured delivery and Hamilton’s bluesy, visceral guitar work.

Roses‘ will include the previously released “If You Change,” and the album’s second and latest single “No Driver.” “No Driver” is a lush, cinematic tune anchored around earnest, seemingly lived-in lyrics and the seemingly effortless craftsmanship that the band has long been known for. Of course, as always the stars of the show are Hamilton’s gorgeous, dreamily mesmerizing vocal and Thomas’ soulful, Crazy Horse-era Neil Young-like guitar work.

The song “is about knowing and loving people, who seem to thrive being on autopilot, at least for a while. It’s written from the perspective of trying to be supportive, and knowing it can be kind of magic when you’re in it, but also just waiting patiently for whenever they’re ready to move on from destructive behavior,” says Widowspeak’s Molly Hamilton. “I also kind of wrote it to my younger self. I’m 1000% on the other side of my wilder years (quit drinking almost seven years ago and now have a baby) but I definitely felt aimless for a long time. I care now, and caring about things and people and having a reason… is the whole point.”

“The video riffs on ‘Jesus take the wheel’; that’s it, that’s the concept,” Hamilton says of the accompanying video. “We have our friend Gary Canino from Dark Tea playing a Driver who’s kind of feeling the weight of the world, and Jesus (Johnathan Chriest) takes over as he goes about his night, dropping off the Mysterious Business Lady (Moira Spahić) and then picking up a couple other passengers. Kind of a ragtag group of people, Jesus driving them home.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Orielles Share Angular “Wasp”

Acclaimed, Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The Orielles — Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums, vocals) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) — will be releasing their highly anticipated fourth album, the Joel Anthony Patchett-produced Only You Left through Heavenly Recordings on Friday.

Recorded last summer in two locations — the Greek Island of Hydra and Hamburg — the 11-song Only You Left reportedly sees the band consolidating the bold experimentation of 2022’s Tableau with the more stripped-back, song-driven approach of their earlier releases, channeling a return to the familiar. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. 

The JOVM mainstays, who originally started out in Halifax first gained attention both nationally and internationally with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment, which recently celebrated its eighth birthday. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people,” the band says. 

As for the foundations of the forthcoming album, the band’s Henry Carlyle Wade says “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums.” “It comes naturally, the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford adds, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Interestingly through this process of creative renewal, the JOVM mainstays have managed to weather a pandemic, the fickleness of a trend-driven music industry and somehow emerge with something that’s familiar yet completely different. 

According to Wade, the first ideas for the new album can be traced back to May 2023: Esmé Hand-Halford had purchased a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar. These heavy drones would later form the background of album tracks “Wasp” and “Three Halves.” 

In breaks between tours, the band began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analyzing the voice notes with a granular attention to detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry Carlyle Wade. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”

While the Tableau sessions were semi-improvisational and partially written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions between May 2023 and last summer. Each of the album’s 11 songs were meticulously refined and became its own distinctive work. “It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford recalls. “But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”

Producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett, whom Esmé Hand-Halford dubs the honorary fourth member of the band, has had a massive influence on the album’s sound and approach. “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” Henry Carlyle Wade says, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.” Sidonie Hand-Halford adds, “He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting really, really involved with that process as well. And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.” 

Only You Left will include the previously released “Three Halves,” the double single “You Are Eating Part of Yourself”/”To Undo the World Itself,”Tears Are,” and the album’s latest single “Wasp.”

Anchored around a looping, buzzing and droning guitar line, an angular and propulsive bass line and skittering, off-kilter drumming and percussion, “Wasp” subtly channels In Rainbows while simultaneously evoking a wasp flying in figure 8s and circles higher and higher.

“Taking on another shift in perspective, the lyrics follow a [sic] miniscule wasp as it reaches the height of a mountain, one of nature’s grandest settings,” the band explains. “Inspired by the film Black Narcissus I wanted to capture this feeling of questioning faith, purpose and the self when confronted by such vastness, using a wasp to exaggerate this magnitude even further. In seeing through its perspective maybe we can relate to the plight of the wasp, but the real sting in the tale (hah!) is that ultimately it is nature itself that conditions the wasp to hurt us.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays The Orielles Return with Hook-Driven “Tears Are”

Acclaimed, Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The Orielles — Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums, vocals) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) — will be releasing their highly anticipated fourth album, the Joel Anthony Patchett-produced Only You Left through Heavenly Recordings on March 13, 2026. 

Recorded last summer in two locations — the Greek Island of Hydra and Hamburg — the forthcoming, 11-song Only You Left reportedly sees the band consolidating the bold experimentation of 2022’s Tableau with the more stripped-back, song-driven approach of their earlier releases, channeling a return to the familiar. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. 

Now, as you may remember, the JOVM mainstays, which originally started out in Halifax gained attention both nationally and internationally with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment, which will celebrates its eighth birthday this months. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people,” the band says. 

As for the foundations of the forthcoming album, the band’s Henry Carlyle Wade says “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums.” “It comes naturally, the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford adds, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Interestingly through this process of creative renewal, the JOVM mainstays have managed to weather a pandemic, the fickleness of a trend-driven music industry and somehow emerge with something that’s familiar yet completely different. 

According to Wade, the first ideas for the new album can be traced back to May 2023: Esmé Hand-Halford had purchased a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar. These heavy drones would later form the background of album tracks “Wasp” and “Three Halves.” 

In breaks between tours, the band began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analyzing the voice notes with a granular attention to detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”

While the Tableau sessions were semi-improvisational and partially written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions between May 2023 and last summer. Each of the album’s 11 songs were meticulously refined and became its own distinctive work. “It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford recalls. “But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”

Producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett, whom Esmé Hand-Halford dubs the honorary fourth member of the band, has had a massive influence on the album’s sound and approach. “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” Henry Carlyle Wade says, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.” Sidonie Hand-Halford adds, “He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting really, really involved with that process as well. And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.” 

Only You Left will include the previously released “Three Halves,” the double single “You Are Eating Part of Yourself”/”To Undo the World Itself,” and the album’s latest single “Tears Are.” Arguably the track that directly channels elements of their earlier sound, “Tears Are” is anchored around the JOVM mainstays long-held penchant for post punk-like hookiness paired with dreamy vocals. But the track ultimately fades out in a brooding, minor take on the song’s motif. The song evokes an unfinished thought or something left hanging without a sense of closure. The lyrics explore paradoxes with inversions and wordplay — and are intentionally ambiguous for the listener to make their own interpretations.

“ We had this vague imagery of wood versus metal,” the band’s Esmé Dee Hand-Halford says. “Hamburg was metal and Hydra was wood. Everything fell naturally into either category.”