WIDOWSPEAK Roses (Captured Tracks) — Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas, the two members of the Brooklyn-based band Widowspeak, are partners in every way. In addition to their shared band duties, they’re in a committed romantic relationship together and have become parents to a daughter since the release of their last record, The Jacket, four years ago. In their songs, though, Widowspeak still allows plenty of room for the heartachy pining that’s been the lifeblood of pop music since even before the Beatles’ expressed a desire for hand holding. If the material on Roses, the band’s new album and seventh overall, is tinged with real wisdom, it also quietly revels in the moony feelings most often associated with dewy-eyed youth. “The Hook” is a nice encapsulation of what Widowspeak can do; it’s a kind, melancholy ballad of bygone love (“Pressed all your carnations/ In a black book/ Taped our song off the college station/ That was all it took”). Hamilton’s evocative, airy singing freights the lyrics with approachable emotions throughout the album. “Wondering,” for example, is languid and lovely, like Mazzy Star with more of a country bent. The songwriting consistently meets the high standard those vocals set. “Soft Cover” is a sly, headlong marvel, and “If You Change” has a melodic strength and confident ease that recalls R.E.M. at the peak of their powers. Roses is Widowspeak in full bloom. Stop and smell these cuts: “No Driver,” “Angel Number,” “Heaven Is Waiting,” and “Actor.”

MODEST MOUSE An Eraser and a Maze (Glacial Pace) — An Eraser and a Maze feels like an album meant to ease Modest Mouse into the back end of their career, to a sort of scruffy elder statesmen phase. That’s not a bad thing, not at all. Back on a true indie label — band mainstay Isaac Brock’s own Glacial Pace — for the first time in ages, Modest Mouse is making the sort of casually experimental music that is the bailiwick of artists who have decided that trying to shape art to adhere to perceived expectations is for suckers. There are weird little digressions sprinkled across the album (“Knocked Down by Waves,” “Stoner Party”) that align with the well-why-the-hell-not? ethos of Guided by Voices, and Brock and his cohorts seem generally inclined to hop from one sonic notion to the next, happy to discover where the undulating lily pads might lead. “Dogbed in Heaven /Give It a Skeleton” is like their version of a Tom Waits song, and “Absolutely Necessary Never” is enlivened by an odd undercurrent of death disco. Through it all, they still maintain their well-established artistic identity. “Picking Dragons, Pockets” is pulsing and thunderous in a familiar manner, and “Look How Far…” is most accurately described as classic Modest Mouse. Weave your way to these tracks: “Life’s a Dream,” “Rotten Fruit,” and “Song About Nothing.”

Featured image by Michael Stasiak (taken from Widowspeak’s Instagram)