- A luminous new album beamed in from upstate New York, Half Waif’s Mythopoetics is yet another collection of irreverent, singular ballads. Her words and stories may be unapologetically iconoclastic, but the impact of Half Waif aka Nandi Rose’s songs is universally charged.

With a persona like Half Waif, a twist on the caricature of someone sickly, only half the time, it should be no surprise that Mythopoetics sees the native New Yorker unafraid of embracing and battling weakness just as she did on last year’s The Caretaker. However, where The Caretaker was submerged in dread at the end of a decade, the pandemic seems to have awoken a sense of resilience in Nandi Rose.

Swimmer, the album’s opening track, contemplates the romance between Rose and her husband, Zach Levine of Pinegrove, in lockdown. The lyrics may be straightforward, “I am loving you / I wanted to sing for you / so I’m gonna sing for you,” but there’s an endearing quality in her optimistic simplicity. The production, electronic and booming, suffices for words: sometimes feelings are better conveyed through surging synthesisers than vocal fry filler.

Horse Racing feels cinematic, dissonant and threatening an unpredictable chorus at any moment. It reminds me of Oneohtrix Point Never’s score for Uncut Gems, or Chromatics’ contribution to Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Indebted to IDM and ambient electronica, it’s less a soundscape than it is a release of the nervous tension and self-care that filled the quieter, even the grander moments on The Caretaker.

Even in the record’s sadder moments, Half Waif knows how to raise an air of intrigue. Like the Mythopoetics the album is named after -and like all good Greek tragedies- the devil’s in the detail. When she confronts destructive forces on Swimmer and Orange Blossoms, it’s never explicit: “Everybody grows up and leaves me in the tower, drinkin’ from the bottle / seeing every color.”

In 2020, Half Waif’s Nandi Rose saw herself as The Caretaker, but one turbulent year later, she’s learned to embrace the perils and even the euphoria of a modern day America, one Mythopoem to the next.

- Sean Tayler.