Not every artist out there can claim to have written a bridge as transcendent as the one on Half Waif’s “Ordinary Talk”. The first single from Nandi Rose’s 2020 Half Waif album The Caretaker, “Ordinary Talk” enters a moment about two minutes in, after a slowly cresting build, where almost everything drops away, except for a simple synth and Rose singing “Sitting in the dark / Dreaming up a song / Crying in my coffee / Doing it all wrong”. The quotidian stillness, with all its melancholy, of life. Then more keys trickle in. Then, a musical rush cascades in, layers of vocals, and it truly feels like the stars parting. It is, in a word, a perfect moment.
So imagine the thrill that Rose basically does it again on her new album, the beautiful, shattering, and ultimately hopeful See You at the Maypole. The moment comes on an otherwise pretty downcast electro-leaning song called “Dust”. What starts as a sort of robotic, dreamy, almost Ellen Allien-esque song, all bleary-edged keys and rigid four-on-the-floor beats, eventually lands into a startlingly vulnerable bridge: “Maybe in a movie / They’d be asking ‘How’s she doing?’ / ‘Oh she’s looking so much better / Than the last time that you met her’” Rose sings, with a vocal that sounds fully devoid of reverb or affect. It’s a bit of rough vocal, dry and yearning, but it is precisely this nudity that is so affecting. It’s rare for a Half Waif song to drop the reverb or the dreaminess or double-tracking, but here, in this moment, Rose lets it all hang out there, loose in the wind. Then, as with “Ordinary Talk”, more voices and keys come in, and then a cavalcade of percussion and tones and even more vocal layers. It’s, again, a perfect moment.
See You at the Maypole was written largely in response to a miscarriage that Rose endured. The unimaginable confusion, heartache and anger that come with an experience like this — so individual and yet also so recognizable to so many people — fuel a lot of the writing here. On that bridge in “Dust”, she’s imagining what this moment might look like in a movie, going on to say “Quick cut to country / Standing within the open doorway / And I’m cradling a baby / And I’m stronger for the memory,” essentially predicting a future where everything is ok now, see? But everything isn’t ok, and that’s ok — on See You at the Maypole, Rose sits with this, and lets us look on in an almost shocking display of openness and poetic observation.
It begins right away. On opening track “Fog Winter Balsam Jade”, Rose enters with “I will not despair this time of year / When all the lights are shining / And the bells are ringing high and clear / Oh, you can’t say I’m not trying”. It’s the kind of thing many of us can relate to: that feeling when you’ve gone through an incredibly hard time, and are simply trying to be present, to let go of it even a little, but no one can really notice because the progress — on the outside — looks so minute. On the following “Collect Color”, she’s looking for signs of beauty and symbolism in the world (“Chicken feet and the smell of blood / I’m looking up: a pigeon / White as a dove”). When the drums kick in after the first chorus, it feels like something truly special is setting into motion.
See You at the Maypole is, by far, Rose’s longest record, at 17 songs and about an hour in length. And while it may have benefitted a touch from some slight trimming (there may be one too many slow cuts), overall, it’s a wholly engaging listen, texturally varied, and probably her most consistent record to date. Nearly every turn here, nearly every transition, feels right.
The dreamy “I-90” ends with about a minute of choir singing, which is followed by first single “Figurine”, which has a sort of classic 1970s singer-songwriter vibe. The bigger indie rock styling of “Big Dipper” (which has one of the catchiest choruses here – and truly, it feels rare to have an album this emotional be this catchy) leads directly into the insular wisp of an interlude of “Shirtsleeves”, acting as a bridge to the still-as-snow piano-based searching of “Sunset Hunting”. Spare piano balladry (which is just as much of a favorite of Rose’s as synth and pop structures) returns on “Mother Tongue”, which itself has an intriguing mix of vocals singing different lyrics and melodies atop each other, creating something really intoxicating. But then that gives way to the epic closer “March Grass”, which climaxes brightly and then just keeps growing and cresting.
The production (handled by Rose and frequent collaborator Zubin Hensler) and composition work across the record feels airtight. The only times it falters, ever so slightly, are when there are too many soft or slow moments in a row, such as when “Violetlight” and “Velvet Coil” are set back to back, and also come after “Ephemeral Being”, which, with its heavy reliance on an undulating vocal affect and loop, does feel a bit incongruous with the album at large. (This song, along with “Big Dipper” and the lovely spoken-word “Heartwood” are reprised here from an EP earlier in the year of the same name, and it felt like less of a sore thumb in that shorter context.) This trio is a noticeable hiccup in the flow of the record, but luckily, it isn’t enough of an issue to derail everything.
The album is lushly produced, performed, and arranged, and the writing, as stated earlier, is often sublime. This is Rose at her most soul-baring, her most revealing. On “Figurine”, she seems to be singing about the empty advice folks around her would offer at such a rough time, saying “Head up / It’s gonna get so much better / You’ll see.” Later, on “Big Dipper”, she appears to be questioning the celestial powers that be, which may have allowed this turmoil, exclaiming, “I cannot shake the feeling / That there’s no one looking out.” On “The Museum”, she comments on time and the suspension of it, but also the mercurial nature of it. (And watch for the moment she sings “Give it another year,” before allowing an awesome string section – which whispered its name earlier in the song – to bloom, briefly subsuming everything.) There are times of poetic observation, but also times of brutal, brittle realism (just look at “Mother Tongue”’s “The red water flowed from me / Before it was a child”).
But though the subject matter is heavy, it is not a lightless record. There is room for hope here. Rose seems fully able to admit that there is still wonder in the world, it’s just that it can be clouded by grief. But on the closer “March Grass”, especially, she seems ready to accept and try to soldier on. She sings “I’m going out where the world is bright / And the air is light and laced with maple / I’m gonna love my life” — and then the music takes off, skyborne, with a fluffy horn filigree akin to a Nicholas Brittell score. It’s one of the finest musical moments of the year. It’s a blissful and optimistic sendoff from a wounded, moving record, but one that feels fully earned. It’s not too dissimilar from the close of Nina Nastasia’s Riderless Horse, another great recent record borne by tragic circumstances, which ended with a hurt but healing Nastasia singing, simply, “I wanna live / I am ready to live”. There’s a defiance, almost, in the decision to pick up and go forward.
At one point in the back half of “Fog Winter Balsam Jade”, over placid piano keys, Rose sings, “I put my hands into the earth / You were my first / You made me a mother / You made me a mother”, as if reminding everyone, including her child she never got to know. It’s an immortalization, an affirmation and a heartbreaking detail; one of such specificity. But it’s indicative of Half Waif’s evolution on See You at the Maypole, taking her work to some unforeseen next level. Rose’s fearlessness with tackling such a deeply-felt and vulnerable subject would be impressive for its candor as it is; that she conveys the maelstrom of emotions at play here with such grace, tenderness, and beautiful musicianship is simply magnificent.
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