The ceremonial folk dance performed around a maypole to mark the return of Spring and fertility is a particularly poignant symbol when you learn the background to American musician Nandi Rose’s sixth full-length album under the stage name Half Waif.
The record was meant to be a lighter and more joyful affair after darker works such as 2021’s ‘Mythopoetics’. The mood changed dramatically when a miscarriage cruelly robbed Nandi Rose of beginning a new chapter in her life with what would have been her first child.
Rose began writing the songs in the summer of 2021 at a solo retreat in the Catskills but after learning of the loss of her baby in December the songs came to reflect feelings of sadness and uncertainty. In Sunset Hunting she sings movingly ”The pain: I’m resigned to it now. I’ve come to accept it’s for me.”
To add to the trauma, whilst in recovery, Rose learnt that her beloved mother-in-law had been diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer. She began to approach the challenge of completing the record with the question: “How can I take the heaviest material of my life and make it feel like air?” This is made possible by the the fact that Rose’s voice and the melodic grace of the songs is reminiscent of Jane Siberry.
Rose welcomed a wealth of musician friends to help realise the project: Jason Burger and Zack Levine on drums and percussion; Josh Marre on guitar; Hannah Epperson and Elena Moon Park on violin; Kristina Teuschler on clarinet; Willem de Koch on trombone; Rebecca El-Saleh on harp and Spencer Zahn on upright bass. The New York City-based choir Khorikos sing on several songs.
”I will not despair” is the opening line of the opening song: Fog Winter Balsam Jade and the delicate beauty of Figurine, written in January 2022, establishes that melancholy rather than rage stands out as the dominant feeling. The pain of loss is there all the same and expresses in lines such as :”I felt it growing in me, And now everything is gone.”.
A quiet resolves sees her through. “I embrace in all directions” she intones on Heartwood.
Over the course of 17 songs and a playing time of just under an hour, the emphasis of this lovely record is on catharsis but, above all, speaks of the importance of hope, connection and strength.
