Half Waif at Cheer Up Charlies
Half Waif at Lost Weekend 2017 (more by Amanda Hatfield)

Half Waif streaming first album for Cascine, 'Lavender'

Nandi Rose Plunkett’s art pop project Half Waif is releasing its first full length for Cascine, Lavender, next week (4/27), and the album is streaming in full a week early. Of the album, Nandi says:

Lavender is so named for my grandmother Asha – a nod to the lavender she would pluck from her garden and boil in a pot on the stove. The first time I noticed her doing this, it struck me as a kind of magic: the small black cauldron bubbling with a piece of the earth. She did it to make the house smell good. I believe it was also a ritual of purification, clearing out any shadows that may have tried to creep into the old English home she’d lived in, alone, for fifty years.

When I wrote and recorded Lavender, my grandmother was alive, and though she wasn’t ill at the time of her sudden death in September, it was obvious her life – after 95 years – was drawing to a close. As a result, themes of aging and collapse are all over this album. It is an elegy to time, the pilgrimages we take, and the ultimate slow plod towards our end. It is an examination of the way we fracture, inside ourselves and inside our relationships – the fissures that creep along the structures we build, the tendency towards disintegration.

Stream the album in full at NPR.

As mentioned, Half Waif is touring with Hovvdy, including a record release show at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right (4/27) the day the album comes out (tickets).

She also has dates with Japanese Breakfast after that, and a Kingston, NY show on June 20 at BSP with Fraternal Twin (tickets). Updated dates are listed, with a visual for recent single “Back In Brooklyn,” below.

Half Waif — 2018 Tour Dates
4/25 – Washington, DC @ DC9^
4/26 – Philadelphia, PA @ Boot and Saddle^
4/27 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right^
4/28 – Boston, MA @ Great Scott^
4/29 – Montreal, QC @ Vitrola^
5/1 – Toronto, ON @ The Drake Hotel^
5/2 – Detroit, MI @ Marble Bar^
5/3 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen^
5/4 – Madison, WI @ The Frequency^
5/6 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge^
5/7 – Salt Lake City @ Kilby Court^
5/9 – Reno, NV @ Holland Project^
5/10 – San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Hall^
5/11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Moroccan Lounge
5/13 – Arcosanti, AZ @ FORM Arcosanti
5/15 – Dallas, TX @ City Tavern^
5/16 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Jr.^
6/14 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall *
6/15 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Ballroom at the Taft Theatre *
6/16 – St. Louis, MO @ The Ready Room *
6/17 – Kansas City, MO @ The Record Bar *
6/19 – Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s
6/20 – Kingston, NY @ BSP Kingston w/ Fraternal Twin

^ w/ Hovvdy
* w/ Japanese Breakfast