HALF WAIF Wed 6/28 Doug Fir
HALF WAIF Wed 6/28 Doug Fir LANDON SPEERS

Just a couple of weeks ago, Nandi Rose Plunkett—who sings and plays keyboards in the alt-country outfit Pinegrove—penned an essay for Esquire titled “Don’t Call Me the Girl in the Band.” It’s her response to the on- and offline misogyny that constantly reduces her to “a useless prop beside the real musicians” instead of “a being who loves music, looking to turn down the rest of the noise.”

Plunkett reclaims the space she’s often denied with the sweeping synth-pop of her solo project, Half Waif. She’s released two full-lengths under the moniker, plus an excellent new EP called form/a. Plunkett mirrors her own inner complexity in experimental electro-pop that she sometimes blends with Celtic folk and freeform Indian bhajans, two seemingly dissimilar genres united by her own heritage (her mother is Indian and her father is Irish American), especially on classical-but-danceable songs like “Turn Me Around” from 2016’s Probable Depths.

Her lyrics are like Morse code signals flashing from the opposite end of a foggy bay; they center on her ongoing struggle to communicate with the outside world. Plunkett grasps for language even as she’s singing, which makes listening feel like an active exercise. She fears her inability to forecast her emotions for a romantic partner on “Severed Logic,” form/a’s lead single: “My mood is a pendulum, I don’t think you can handle it,” she sings, her voice wavering over the word “handle” like she’s bearing the full weight of doing so alone. Plunkett’s new EP as Half Waif is her best yet—though we didn’t need any more proof that she’s a “real musician,” these six songs are irrefutable.