Quite apparently, Nandi Rose, better known as Half Waif, did not come to play in 2021. Having just released one of 2020’s best – and most underrated – albums, The Caretaker, she’s been dropping off new singles throughout the early year as if her life depended on it.
Naturally, if you’re a fan, you already know her music sounds just like that. Her searching, never-ending sense of ornate melancholy has been perfected to a point that she’s practically assured to nail it with anything she does, and her new single “Take Away the Ache” is just the latest proof of that. About the song, she says:
“This is a song about the paradoxes of loving. How we ask the impossible of each other, how we promise what we can’t give. But I don’t mean this cynically – I actually find it quite remarkable. It’s kind of an incredible feat of imagination and will, the way we help each other transform our darkest moments into something bearable, like a game of make-believe. ‘It’s not an ache,’ you might say, ‘it’s an ember.’ And so together we stay warm by the fire of what we’ve created, lit by a sweet lie that makes it all okay for a while. To love is to believe in a kind of magic.”
More propulsive than her recent singles, “Take Away The Ache” boasts a gradually building beat that essentially implodes before its conclusion.
Check it out below, or on streaming platforms, and stay tuned (with any luck) for more from Half Waif very soon.
