Photo credit: Ali Cherkis
Half Waif, the project of Nandi Rose, follows up 2020’s stunning ‘The Caretaker’ album with new 7″ single ‘Orange Blossoms’. Nandi says the song ‘feels like the next chapter in that story’ and was inspired by how she found herself taking care of someone who was struggling with addiction and ended up feeling their pain as her own: ‘The song came out like an incantation, a desperate plea to be rescued from wrestling with everything. But it unfolded into something more resolute as I refocused on the task of taking responsibility for myself and my own life. The song touches on a phrase that kept coming back to me at that time, which was: ‘no one’s going to do it for you.’ You can help and be helped, you can love and be loved, but salvation is your own to seek and claim.’
Opening with woozy piano notes and sublime yet slightly eerie atmospherics that wouldn’t be out of place on a Bat for Lashes album, Nandi opens the song by pleading that ‘Somebody buy me roses, somebody make sure I get out of bed today’. These personal pleas continue through until she admits ‘I don’t want to be here, staring at the walls again’. More kaleidoscopic and experimental tones come through in the soundscape around the halfway mark while the impassioned vocals become ever more honest as Nandi talks of others growing up and moving on, leaving her behind…
