Prolific dream-pop exponent, Nandi Rose – aka Half Waif – comes to terms with personal tragedy and achieves redemption (kind of) on her sixth album, See You At The Maypole.

Release Date:  4^th October 2024

Label: ANTI-

Formats: Vinyl / Digital

PERSONAL TRAGEDY

Half Waif is the stage name of Amanda Rose “Nandi” Plunkett, or Rose Nandi as she’s probably better known.  Formerly a vocalist with New Jersey indie outfit, Pinegrove (she still guests on their albums), Half Waif is certainly prolific.  See You at the Maypole is her sixth album in a catalogue that launched in 2014 with her debut, Kotekan and, most recently, featured her 2021 offering, Mythopoetics.

See You At The Maypole is, arguably, Half Waif’s most intense collection to date, and there’s a tragic reason for that.  When she was originally planning her new album, her intention was to come up with a set of bright, joyful songs but that idea was put on hold – perhaps permanently, who knows? – when she suffered the ordeal of a miscarriage in December 2022.  See You At The Maypole is Nandi’s means of coming to terms with that horrific experience.

Originally envisioned as a “…collection of soft and joyous odes to motherhood and new beginnings,” the nascent album instead assumed an altogether darker hue as Nandi continued to write, even as complications arising from the miscarriage dragged on, and she soon realized that the feelings and experiences that she was starting to articulate would resonate with many people, as she explains: “This wasn’t just my story… it was every story of loss – the loss of a life, the loss of a dream, the loss of trust and hope and faith.  A story of finding a way back again.  My own avenue back to the land of the living was through my relationships with people and with the natural world.”

COLLABORATORS AND CO-CONSPIRATORS

Put together with long-term collaborator, Zubin Hensler, See You At The Maypole also features contributions from Jason Burger and (husband) Zack Levine on drums and percussion, Josh Marré on guitar, Hannah Epperson and Elena Moon Park on violins, Kristina Teuschler on clarinet, Willem de Koch on trombone, Rececca El-Saleh on harp and Spencer Zahn on upright bass.  Several songs also feature the other-worldly tones of the NYC-based choir, Khoricos.  See You At The Maypole is an album of wide variety and feel; in places, the sound is richly melodic; elsewhere the mood is ambient, verging on bleak, and, always, the tone matches the message.

ATMOSPHERE AND INTENSITY

Nandi confronts her grief right from the outset in opening track, Fog Winter Balsam Jade, with lines like “So I put my hands into the Earth and I thank you.  You were my first – you made me a mother” and “And now every July will never feel the same, or cutting an apple, or hearing your name,” in an atmospheric song.  There’s plenty of space in the production, allowing the listener to focus upon Nadi’s super-sweet voice but, listen closely, and you’ll realise that there actually a lot going on. 

Collect Color is even more intense, especially when the full band kicks in, yet Nandi seems to float above it all, with her voice this time as light as air.  Piano and echo-y synth sounds provide a pared-back accompaniment  as Nandi delivers a deeply personal and intimate message to a departed lover in I-90, before things become altogether more accessible – though no less intimate – for Figurine, a tender ballad in which the intensity  of Jason’s drums and Zack’s percussion at first seem at odds with the softness of the song – but, somehow, it works.

Nandi turns to the natural world for her inspiration in Heartwood, a spoken word recitation, delivered to a light, sparkly synth backing that reminds me of Tomita’s Snowflakes Are Dancing, before Jason’s drums take centre-stage once more for the mellow Big Dipper.  And, with a vocal delivery that seems to come via NASA and lyrics like: “And all I’m left with is the memory of threading the button through the hole at the end of his sleeve,” the short, intriguing, Shirtsleeves is maybe the prime candidate for the title of the album’s weirdest cut.

MELODIES AND MELODRAMA

In complete contrast, the melodic Sunset Hunting is relatively unadorned as Nandi returns to the subject of her miscarriage using just piano and voice to relive her experience with lines like: “How can winter light be golden when everything else is dead? How can there be life inside of me and then death?” before sharing what is, perhaps, the album’s first glimmer of optimism as she concludes: “And I will be a mother, I will feel the pain rippling and it will leave, like lightening.  And something will be left standing.”

The unpredictable electronica of Dust is transformed into an almost-decipherable song, before Nandi switches to the opposite extreme for Slow Music, a ballad that could almost be described as “poppy.”  Josh provides most of the backing on his electric guitar and Elena adds the violin highlights on a rich, satisfying song that features another of Nandi’s outstanding vocals.  Passion and sincerity are themes that pervade See You At The Maypole and that’s an observation that applies particularly to Ephemeral Being, a song in which Nandi repeatedly assures herself: “You’re not a failure, you’re an ephemeral being.”  The percussion is, once again, vivid, and Hannah coaxes some wonderful sounds from her violin in a song that, I’m sure, could be listened to a hundred times and, each time, the listener would notice something new.

Things slip back into the ambient mood for the tinkly, dreamy Violetlight, before Nandi moves on to melodious intimacy for the introspective, thought-provoking Velvet Coil, a song for which lavish instrumental trappings are eschewed in favour of Nandi’s voice and synth. 

HIGHLIGHTS AND A HAPPY ENDING

Described as “…a languid, uneasy look at bringing life into a crumbling world,” The Museum is a genuine album highlight.  On the surface, it could almost be mistaken for a conventional song – that is, until you study the lyrics which, with lines like: “…and now they’re building a museum on the corner of Main Street, preserving something while we’re left to decompose in the heat,” demonstrate that Nandi’s anguish hasn’t been eradicated just yet.  Elena’s violin soars, whilst Kristina’s clarinet adds a special something at the bottom end.  And the anthemic King of Tides is another of the album’s more immediately accessible tracks; Kristina’s clarinet is back again and I particularly like the slippery, sliding sounds from Josh’s guitar.

And, just maybe, Nandi comes up with the pick of the whole bunch with the fascinating Mother Tongue.  It’s a seamless blend of two separate songs, partly a further reflection of Nandi’s recent ordeal and partly a string of dreamy, pastoral observations – and they fit together comfortably and inspirationally.  Which leads us to the grand conclusion.  Closing track March Grass is a song that I could well imagine being written and performed by Kate Bush and, after all the agony, introspection, soul searching and regret of having to confront the biggest tragedy of her life, Nandi finds redemption, of a sort.  The optimism is palpable in the song’s (almost) closing lines: “I’m going out where the world is bright, and the air is bright and laced with maple.  I’m gonna love my life.”  She may have been down, but she isn’t out!

sadness and ecstacy

As the album’s press release concludes:

See You At The Maypole is a recognition of personal sadness and a call to ecstatic togetherness.  It’s a gathering of the colours of our spirit, in all its shades, and making something intricate and remarkable.  The ceremonial folk dance performed around the maypole is filled with fauna and flora, with ribbons woven into complex braids, incapable of unravelling; these devices are survivals of ancient ritual, honouring the living trees and the return of Spring and fertility.  These patters – this dance – cannot be completed alone and so, Half Waif welcomes others to join her, a collective of bleeding colour. 

“We are so much stronger for the colourful experiences we go through,” she says.  “That’s where we find our humanity, and find each other.”

And that’s a statement that puts See You At The Maypole entirely into context.

Watch the official video to Figurine, a track from the album, here:

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