LP released: Apr 27, 2018
Nandi Rose Plunkett writes, records and performs under the name Half Waif. Her music embodies her pensive nature and her lifelong endeavor to reconcile a sense of place. Raised in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Nandi was the daughter of an Indian refugee mother and an American father of Irish/Swiss descent. Growing up she listened to everything from Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos, to Celtic songstress Loreena McKennitt and traditional Indian bhajans. In college she studied classical singing and became engrossed with the works of Olivier Messiaen and Claude Debussy. Her output as Half Waif reflects these varying influences, resulting in a richly layered collage of blinking electronic soundscapes, echoes of Celtic melodies and the elegiac chord changes of 19th-century art music. Half Waif self-released two EPs and two albums before joining the Cascine family in 2017 to release her form/a EP, and to reissue her 2016 album Probable Depths. This year, Half Waif will release her latest body of work: a new album titled Lavender, due for spring release on Cascine. Lavender is so named for Nandis grandmother Asha a nod to the lavender she would pluck from her garden and boil in a pot on the stove. As a tribute to her late grandmother, themes of aging and collapse are all over this album. It is an elegy to time, the pilgrimages we take, and the ultimate slow plod towards our end. It is also an examination of the way we fracture, inside ourselves and inside our relationships the fissures that creep along the structures we build, and the small personal apocalypses that pockmark our days. Both sonically and thematically, Lavender is Half Waifs most fully realized work to date an album of electronic pop thats as ambitious as it is evocative. |
