Following their very much acclaimed fourth album, Expect the Best, from 2017, New York dreampop duo Widowspeak return with Breadwinner, their new single on Captured Tracks. The new song comes with a stop-motion video made by the group's members, singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas, at home in Brooklyn.
"I have to recognize all that we took for granted when I wrote this song a few years ago, or even when we were recording it last winter," Molly Hamilton explains about the new track. "There was the option to imagine a new reality for yourself, the choice to quit and start over, the possibility to support your loved ones. Obviously, there are lyrics within this song that feel so strangely on-the-nose right now (even the part about bread), and perhaps their meaning has changed since everything is different. Now feels like the only time we could possibly let this song into the world, when everyone is trying to figure out life beyond the way we earn a living, and how we’ll earn anything going forward. So, without wanting to capitalize on the heavy realities we’re all facing, we hope it brings some comfort or at least entertainment to people at home."
Breadwinner draws lyrical influence from the band's growing fascination with bread as a symbol of labor compensation, and also from a zine by Ian Vens whose cover read "OH PLEASE BABY JUST QUIT OK IF ANYTHING COMES ALONG PLEASE PROMISE ME YOULL QUIT THAT JOB." It was on display in their home for years, and Hamilton related to it in terms of work and financial insecurity.
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