Emotions lead the way

With intricate synthesizer landscape, occasional off-kilter drums, and frontwoman Nandi Rose’s powerful mezzo-soprano, Half Waif’s sweeping electro-pop sound is akin to that of Oh Land, Robyn and early Björk but still distinctively hers. In her latest album, The Caretaker, Rose focuses this sound and centers her production to highlight her intense emotions and journey of healing. The album, filled with dense compositions treated with superb attention-to-details, is gentle yet expansive, igniting a profound and nuanced catharsis on its best tracks. 

In The Caretaker, Rose refines her sound. The album highlights strike a robust balance between grandeur and subtlety, producing anthemic earworms depicting a deeply personal narrative about self-care and healing. “My Best Self” is just that. The layered, evolving instrumentals combine with Rose’s tender vocal performance creates a captivating meditative ballad. Towards the climax, Rose belts, “feel the love of who you’re with/ even if you’re all you need,” over and over again as if to assure herself or her own being. Doing away with conventional verse-chorus pop structure in a lot of the tracks, Rose is deliberate and emphatic about her use of repetitions in refrains.

In another highlight, “Blinking Light,” Rose’s voice dances with the sliding synths to create a dynamic soundscape. The only repetition comes powerfully at the climax as she declares her burning desire to heal for herself and her relationship: “I’ll give it all I got.” Rose forgoes the mold of pop structure, treating it as a tool to serve her narratives rather than a strict rule.

Such a narrative is vulnerable and restrained. Rose’s lyricism is free-form and layered, embracing a certain poetic structure heavy on vague imagery. On “Ordinary Talk,” the tight harmonies, expressive vocals, and off-kilter percussion highlight a contradicting and touching self-revelation: a battle between independence and loneliness under a mundane routine.

Album closer “Window Place” is just as grand and nuanced. Comparing herself to a window passively reflecting the seasons, she yearns for a better day that will come as winter passes and summer arrives. Rose deliberately uses imagery to paint over her personal vulnerability, making them more relatable. This quality in her songwriting, while beautiful in grand anthems with expansive instrumentations, runs a bit melodramatic and slightly mawkish in bare piano-driven tracks like “Brace” and “Generation.”

It doesn’t take much to recognize that the album title, The Caretaker, refers to Rose’s self-care and self-medication in order to improve the relationships in her life. Blending conventional pop and experimental textures, the album understands keenly how to use music as a tool to convey complex emotions with incredible intentionality and attention to details. As a result, The Caretaker glows with admirable authenticity.