Hear Half Waif’s Shadowy Synth Pop on “Turn Me Around”

Brooklyn’s Nandi Rose Plunkett has said that her synth pop project, Half Waif, was the result of a time, “when all my identities were fracturing and shifting.” You can immediately hear that in how “Turn Me Around,” the highlight of May’s Probable Depths, fuses so many disparate sounds. Plunkett’s beautifully ornamented melodies—intricately woven, as if using harmonies to climb into the sky—recall Judee Sill’s flanged poise, or more so, the New Age webbings of Enya. Still, grounding the glassy “Turn Me Around” is a searing double-dutch beat that points square at pop radio. The music contains dark shadows as well as sugar—were you to text this Bandcamp link to a friend, the most appropriate emoji pairing might be a crystal ball and a lollipop.

You could imagine Half Waif sharing bills with the likes of Julia Holter or Lydia Ainsworth. But if you’ve seen Plunkett and her band—which includes Zack Levine and Adan Carlo—perform this year, it is more likely as members of Pinegrove, who themselves are hard to pin, blending the twang of alt-country and the open-hearted euphoria of emo. Needless to say, Half Waif make music worlds away from Pinegrove. This seems fitting for an artist like Plunkett, who navigates myriad styles already. There’s a moment on “Turn Me Around” where she totally shreds her voice at the edge of a line—“I’m tired of my own breath/I’m tired of the sound that I make when we separate”—and you wonder if the busier band did seep in after all.

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