Half Waif aka Nandi Rose found out she was pregnant in the summer of 2021 and anticipated nine months of writing music through a new, maternal lens. But when a soundless morning arrived that December, the music which became the new album See You At The Maypole took on a new life, one that would seize the uncomfortable reigns of uncertainty. Out today, listen to the new album in full HERE.
See You At The Maypole is both a recognition of personal sadness and a call to ecstatic togetherness. It is gathering the colors of our spirit, in all its shades, and making something intricate and remarkable. The ceremonial folk dance performed around a maypole is filled with fauna and flora, with ribbons woven into complex braids incapable of unraveling; these dances are survivals of ancient ritual, honoring the living trees, and the return of Spring and fertility. These patterns––this dance––cannot be completed alone, and so, Half Waif welcomes others to join her, a collective of bleeding color. “We are so much stronger for the colorful experiences we go through,” she says. “That’s where we find our humanity and find each other.”
New York City-based choir Khorikos adorns several songs, most notably on ‘Fog Winter Balsam Jade’, urging a mantra of collective howling. Naming those stomach-prodding reminders of grief but still recognizing their beauty: cutting an apple in the kitchen; watching a bird take flight from the back yard; a morning glory climbing up the corner of the house (‘Collect Color’); a sunset in the rearview mirror (‘I-90’); fog, winter, balsam and jade. The natural world has often been a cradle to Rose––a gentle sway of serenity––but it’s on ‘See You At The Maypole’ that she had to look to its tougher lessons and embark on a metamorphosis of her own. “Let me be oak,” she utters on ‘Heartwood’. “I embrace in all directions.”
“This wasn’t just my story, I wanted to say. It was every story of loss—the loss of a life, the loss of a dream, the loss of trust and hope and faith. A story of finding a way back again,” Rose explains. “My own avenue back to the land of the living was through my relationships with people and with the natural world. It only seemed right that these songs would invite those people in to build the very heart of the sound.”
To that end, Hensler and Rose welcomed a wealth of players and friends into the world of the record: Jason Burger and Zack Levine on drums and percussion; Josh Marre (Blue Ranger) 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.
Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver) lent his deft mixing skills to many of the tracks, including lead single ‘Figurine.’ “Descriptors just wouldn’t do ‘Figurine’ justice; the song is a complex, emotive portrait of one life altered by the passing of another,” said Paste. “The song itself appears to be a lovely, if melancholy, ode to this loss, with lyrics like “I love you every morning when the sun / Is rising in the yard” coinciding with lyrics like “I felt it growing in me / And now everything is gone”, representing the flood of conflicting emotions Rose and her loved ones must have been grappling with in this time,” added The Needle Drop.
Order ‘See You At The Maypole’
1. Fog Winter Balsam Jade
2. Collect Color
3. I-90
4. Figurine
5. Heartwood
6. Big Dipper
7. Shirtsleeves
8. Sunset Hunting
9. Dust
10. Slow Music
11. Ephemeral Being
12. Violetlight
13. Velvet Coil
14. The Museum
15. King of Tides
16. Mother Tongue
17. March Grass
