Iron & Wine / Half Waif US
Pop folk
Anyone who has suffered a break-up has gotten over it with a few gulps of frontman Sam Beam’s elegant tear-filled tunes. And this 2018 vintage has an iron constitution.
Music is pretty simple at times. With US outfit Iron & Wine, it comes at a regular pace, without hysterics or fanfare. Classy guitar songwriting, in the vein of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Sam Beam and his band have been weaving ballads for 16 years in the purest folk tradition, like a fine wood log smouldering on a makeshift fire at the break of dawn. When you can get half the world to shed a tear with your worn velvet voice, you’ve got the weapons to keep their hearts standing to attention. Their 6th album, “Beast Epic” is an additional ember in a bouquet of eternal flames.
HALF WAIF (US)
“Don't Call Me the Girl in the Band”. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Nandi Rose Plunkett unfolds her deeply personal and engaging music with her project Half Waif.
With electronic landscapes and Celtic melodies, the Massachusetts native moves us with her indie pop and voluptuous voice, which perfectly suits the mesmerising and ghostly tunes of her latest EPs. The daughter of an Indian refugee from Uganda and an American father of Irish descent, Plunkett’s sounds were bound to be inspired. Morose and fragile, scintillating and brutal, Half Waif’s dark and sweet music takes our demons for a ride away from the hustle and bustle through a whirling pop prism.
