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HALF WAIF shares new single “Sodium & Cigarettes.”

• 27th May 2021

Half Waif, the project of Hudson Valley, NY-based artist Nandi Rose, shares “Sodium & Cigarettes,” the hopeful and haunting new single from her anticipated upcoming album ‘Mythopoetics’,out July 9th on ANTI-.

“‘Sodium & Cigarettes’ follows the theme of many of the tracks on Mythopoetics and deals with the recognition that no one is going to magically save us or pull us out of our misery. The chorus ‘okay, give it another day’ is something I say to myself when I’ve had a really awful day and everything feels like a wash. It’s a deep breath and a stab at courage – I can face tomorrow, and who knows what possibilities for joy and growth that will bring,” says Rose. “While working on the album during the Democratic Primary in early 2020, the song took on new meaning for me in light of political conversations. “I believe in something more than what’s in front of me” became a commentary on people saying, ‘well, this system is what we’ve got and you can’t ask for more.’ I firmly believe that we have to fight for the world we imagine, that everything is possible. So this song is really a quiet encouragement for me, a way to tell myself to stop running, to face what’s coming with clarity and vision and courage, to know there’s another tomorrow.“

Last month, Half Waif announced her anticipated new album ‘Mythopoetics’, with a video for lead single “Swimmer,” following tracks “Orange Blossoms,””Party’s Over,” and “Take Away The Ache” which were released earlier this year. 

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’, she 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. 

‘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.