“Here to collect color / on the walk,” Half Waif’s Nandi Rose sings off her ambitious new album See You At The Maypole. It comes after dealing with personal loss, and she said that she took inspiration from Glenn Doyle’s quote, “I entered this ache alone, but inside it I have found everyone.” The album starts in the ache and cold of winter, on “Fog Winter Balsam Jade” and works its way through seventeen songs, some that are “Slow Music,” and some that are bursting with electronic and acoustic energy, until the customary gathering around the Maypole, on the most triumphant song of the album, “March Grass,” that ends the album.

It is something of a cyclical record, to represent the non-linear reality of grief, perhaps, (“How many times / will I have to recognize / there are no timelines?”,) but there are certain things that drive the narrative forward: searching for color in the form of sunsets (in the winter there is so little color, the sky has to suffice), and the actual driving of a car appears a number of times on the record, like the song “I-90” with 80’s reminiscent keyboards and drum machine. “Cloud is pink, road is black, lines are white / I don’t know how much time I have to describe it.”

The album doesn’t have the feeling of being rushed at all, however, helped along by the full 17 track length and hour long playtime of the record. But also the lush poetry, which at times comes forth in spoken word form, like on “Heartwood” and “Shirtsleeves.” Many of the songs were, in fact, created in Nandi’s voice memo app. There are many take aways for people who have experienced or anticipate grief. One of the most poetic and insightful is the play between color and the outside world and darkness and the “numb and nameless / deep.”

Nandi embraces them all, but it is certainly an optimistic and grand offering. The idea of gathering at the Maypole typifies Glenn Doyle’s quote about the ache going from personal to universal. “Bring my / universe closer,” Nandi sings on perhaps the most beautiful and triumphant line of the album in perhaps my favorite song on the album, “King of Tides”. It’s hard to pick a favorite on this album, however, and it goes from Weyes Blood folkiness to Sufjan-like explosiveness (the album production was inspired at times by his Age of Adz album). It’s a deep and beautiful album, that inspires, joins us in our struggle with grief, and shares one person’s couple year struggle from winter to springtime.

order See You At The Maypole by Half Waif HERE