New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Half Waif, the project of Hudson Valley, NY-based artist Nandi Rose, has announced a Fall 2021 tour. The month long tour kicks off in Los Angeles, CA on November 2nd and wraps in Chicago, IL on November 21st. Tickets go on sale Friday, May 21st.
Last month, Half Waif announced her anticipated new album Mythopoetics, with a video for lead single "Swimmer," which the New York Times hailed as "larger than life" and Stereogum called "massive-sounding." Mythopoetics is available for pre-order now and due July 9th via ANTI- Records.
For Nandi Rose, writing a song is an act of transformation. As Half Waif, Rose pieces together the patchworks of our darkest and most vulnerable moments with a golden thread, crafting a majestic evocation of the human experience that permeates with a graceful strength. On new album Mythopoetics, the Hudson Valley-based artist breaks the familial patterns handed down to her, transforming this source of pain into something bearable, beautiful and celebratory. It is an essential reminder that we have the power to shape the stories we tell and the myths we make of our lives.
Half Waif's previous albums The Caretaker (2020), Lavender (2018) and Probable Depths (2016), garnered acclaim for their compelling journeys through solitude, desire and the search for independence, blanketed under a spectacle of deeply-layered synth-pop. Her fifth full-length sees her stretch her creative muscles, as Rose pushes through the barriers of self-scrutiny and transports us into a world of mythic proportions. Charting territories of addiction, memory and loss, Mythopoetics is animated by the traces of what's been left behind: the ghost of orange blossoms, the tail of a meteor across the sky, the taste of loneliness in a crust of bread. It is a kind of modern-day storybook where memory is spun into song and the self is explored and acknowledged with tender, nourishing care.
To bring together the world of Mythopoetics, Rose once again collaborated with multi-instrumentalist, film composer and producer Zubin Hensler. The pair came together for a recording residency at Pulp Arts in Gainesville, Florida, with the intention of creating stripped-back recordings of old songs, solely focusing on Rose and her piano. However, the playground of the studio soon transformed the project into a texturally diverse and kaleidoscopic sonic universe.
"This is the record I've been trying to make for 10 years," Rose says. "My voice is changing, and my confidence has reached a point where I feel that I can sing however I want; I've finally come to a place where I don't have to conform to what I think other people want it to sound like."
By unearthing this kind of self-assurance, Rose was poised to interrogate her life with a new lens. Lead single "Swimmer," a song that examines the effect Alzheimer's has on a loved one, sees Rose strive to use her voice as a tool for communication and healing. "I wanted to sing for you / So I'm going to sing for you," she urges. "I thought of the voice as a wand, trying to reach across this boundary and remain connected with someone who's slipping away," she says.
Mythopoetics is an album about processing past traumas in the quest for a new, sun dappled pathway, and the transformation that takes place as we take each tentative step. The artwork, shot by Ali Cherkis, sees Rose screaming in bright colors on the front, and naked, with a stoic expression on the back, representing the spectrum of emotions explored throughout each track. Change, evolution and joy take real courage, and it's in the catharsis of telling your story that the calm, confident aftermath can finally reach the surface. Here, Half Waif is shunning the shadowed mass of generational trauma and the patterns passed down to her. Instead, she plants a seed, urging the orange blossom to sprout through the cracks in the concrete.
Half Waif Tour Dates
11/2 - Los Angeles @ The Echo
11/3 - San Francisco @ The Chapel
11/5 - Portland @ Mississippi Studios
11/6 - Seattle @ Barboza
11/13 - Philadelphia @ Johnny Brenda's
11/14 - Washington DC @ Songbyrd
11/15 - New York @ Bowery Ballroom
11/16 -
Boston @ Sonia
11/18 - Montreal @ Bar le Ritz
11/19 - Toronto @
Drake Hotel
11/21 -
Chicago @ Schubas.
