The Caretaker

In her fourth album under her Half Waif moniker, Nandi Rose envisioned a fictional groundskeeper struggling to maintain the estate to which she’s been entrusted. But *The Caretaker* is less a concept album than it is a clear-eyed stock-taking of the songwriter and former Pinegrove member’s own life at the end of her twenties, recorded from her front porch in New York’s Hudson Valley: “Sitting in the dark, dreaming up a song, crying in my coffee, doing it all wrong,” she sings on “Ordinary Talk.” It’s deceptively straightforward chamber pop with quietly experimental production flairs, with Rose on a journey to the center of the self. As she puts it on “Blinking Light”: “If this doesn’t change me, nothing will.”

Synth-pop auteur Nandi Rose renders nuanced, deeply compelling portrait of a woman turning away from the world just when she needs help the most.

The album often resembles a reversion to Rose's sparser early work and away from the cavernous jolts of her more recent…

Caretaker is the Anti- label debut for Half Waif, the project of Pinegrove keyboardist Nandi Rose Plunkett, and fourth album overall from the band (other members include Pinegrove drummer Zack Levine).

Nandi Rose Plunkett finds a space of her own on the mesmerising new Half Waif record, The Caretaker.

On her latest album as Half Waif, Nandi Rose wonders down a triumphant journey within, lingering on supersaturated moments of her past throu...

Nandi Rose gives us a ballsy pop record that often uses restraint and delayed payoff to create a deeper connection with her audience

The Caretaker, Nandi Rose's second album as Half Waif, the follow-up to 2018's equally beautiful and accomplished Lavender, is a deceptive artifact,...