Widowspeak – “The Jacket” [Video]

Widowspeak share “The Jacket”, the title track off their forthcoming sixth studio album, to be released March 11 via Captured Tracks. In signature Widowspeak style, “The Jacket” builds on repetition and live room energy as the same chords start to change shape and hypnotize over time. Molly Hamilton croons “no no no, you could never let it go”, speaking to both a physical jacket and its embodiment of an old self. The song’s video, directed by OTIUM, features Robert Earl Thomas as a satin-clad protagonist making his way through a southwest cityscape in a series of vignettes both surreal and mundane. He carries a jacket with him while killing time, pressing his luck with a roll of the dice and curiously engaging with the world he encounters before running to escape it. Amidst the desert sunset, “The Jacket” is forgotten and the dice buried: a swarm of ants where they once were. Watch it here.

Widowspeak on “The Jacket” – “The Jacket is about things we choose, dress up in and adopt as symbols of who we are. Things that become objects loaded with meaning until we eventually lose or discard them, grow out of them. It’s a literal jacket in the song, and in the context of the storyline represents all the cliches (imagined and real) of being in a band, rock and roll, youth, projecting “cool” (or thinking you do), and believing in the power of symbols and costume to help find and define your true self. Eventually you move on from the moment, and the sorts of places and experiences and relationships tied to that time, when The Jacket was your favorite thing in the world and felt like a part of you. It’s hard to let go. But you notice you aren’t that person anymore. “The Jacket”, and everything it represented, was left behind somewhere along the way.

You can pre-order the new album HERE.