Jun 23, 2022
By Joey Arnone
Photography by Kiki Vassilakis
Half Waif (aka Nandi Rose) has surprise-released a new EP, Portraits, which is out today via ANTI-. The EP consists of stripped-back piano and vocal versions of two songs from each of Rose’s previous two studio albums, 2020’s The Caretaker and 2021’s Mythopoetics. Stream the EP in full below.
“I came to music and to songwriting when I was a kid, singing at a piano,” Rose states in a press release. ”Over the years, I learned to build layered arrangements around the songs, which at times felt like a kind of armor. Returning to these voice and piano arrangements feels particularly vulnerable for me. There’s nothing to hide behind. But it also feels like a homecoming, a nod to where I came from. In this form, I saw the songs from a new angle—it was like we were meeting again after we’ve both done some growing up. Sometimes we can say more with so much less.”
Listen to our Why Not Both podcast interview with Half Waif, along with our 2020 Self-Portrait interview with her.