Half Waif has announced her new album, Lavender, along with a video for lead single “Keep It Out.” Lavender is to be released on April 27th via Cascine and the announcement comes amidst her European and UK tour with Iron & Wine, that starts today (full dates below).
“Keep It Out”, Nandi Rose Plunkett (Half Waif) says, is “about the evolution of the self in a relationship: the maintenance of autonomy in the midst of a process of coupling, ageing, and decay.”
This concept is illustrated in the Celina Carney-directed video by “showing two states of being that we experience in relationships: together and alone,” Plunkett explains. “The two boxers stand off as if to fight but then dissolve into a series of movements that depict both a struggle and a communion. They push off each other in one moment and guide each other the next. Meanwhile, alone inside a clear box, the solitary character explores confined movement and confronts boundaries that are invisible yet impermeable. Throughout the video, the three ‘Diamond Head’ dancers act as a kind of Greek Chorus, mischievously threading between the two states of being, operating as the only connection between the isolated islands. Together, these entities explore the ways we attempt to escape from ourselves by hiding inside others – and what we hide from others by keeping it for ourselves.”
Listen below to Half Waif’s new track + video for “Keep It Out”.
About her new album, Nandi shared the following statement: “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.
We face many endings in our lives, on the path toward that unfathomable yet omnipresent ultimate Ending. Break-ups and divorces, marriages and the estrangement of the self, hard times and bittersweet relief, steep precipices that rise up beyond our control over and over again. These endings are markers of time and growth, small personal apocalypses that pockmark our days. And yet there is more to come when the terror subsides; even the night itself – that great darkness – must end and give way to new light. Lavender is a talisman to hold in the midst of that uncertainty, to heal and remind ourselves that it’s not over. It’s not ending yet.”
Lavender is available for pre-order now and due out on April 27th via Cascine. Limited edition LPs of Lavender will include a special photobook, featuring exclusive photographs corresponding to each song on the album. Pages are perforated and can double as photo prints, with song lyrics on the reverse.
Lavender track list and artwork:
1. Lavender Burning
2. Torches
3. Keep It Out (Official video)
4. Lilac House
5. In The Evening
6. Solid 2 Void
7. Silt
8. Back In Brooklyn
9. Parts
10. Leveler
11. Salt Candy
12. Ocean Scope
Half Waif live dates:
Feb 6 – Vienna, Austria @ Wuk ^
Feb 8 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Hypernia ^
Feb 10 – Wiesbaden, Germany @ Schlachthof ^
Feb 11 – Paris, France @ Café de la Danse ^
Feb 13 – Birmingham, UK @ Symphony Hall ^
Feb 14 – Dublin, Ireland @ The Helix ^
Feb 15 – Manchester, UK @ Bridgewater Hall ^
Feb 16 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo ^
Mar 16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Cattivo *
Mar 17 – Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar *
Mar 18 – Lexington, KY @ The Burl *
Mar 19 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups
Mar /20 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
Mar 21 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Backroom at Colectivo Coffee *
Mar 22 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Salon *
^ w/ Iron & Wine
* w/ Mitski