That primal scream on the cover of Mythopoetics is a giveaway that, five albums of intense emotional introspection in, Nandi Rose Plunkett, AKA Half Waif, is still not feeling particularly chilled. This record wears its wounds proudly, from moments of soft reverie and quiet piano like warm rain to soaring dramas of keening loss such as Fortress, swathed in dark R&B, beats building from panicked-mouse heartbeats to sheet-metal storms.
Sometimes the angst seems to overpower the song structure, as on The Apartment, where Plunkett describes the newly acquired habit of smoking as “performing my need”. A few more flashes of humour, lust or anger might offer handholds amid the buffeting doubts and dreads; if you’re really going to name a song Sourdough, it probably shouldn’t be a big reverby ballad. More engaging is the pride in resilience shown by the chiming, aching Party’s Over with its entreaty to “just keep walking”, or the head-over-heels plunge into fragility and fear of loss on the silvery, circling Orange Blossoms (“somebody make sure I get out of bed today”). Best of all is Swimmer, reminiscent of Glasser or Austra with its chilly, rippling arpeggios and pulsing, depth-charge beats.
