The Waiting Room isn’t in a rush to prove itself. The first time I heard it, I barely registered it. Initially it sounded like some (mostly) slow-moving songs, all grey and quiet. But the second time around, things opened up. There’s more going on in the margins. That first half in particular has a pulse—some uneasy grooves, flashes of jazz, a little swagger even—but everything’s still haunted. It’s like the songs are trying to move forward while dragging something heavy behind them. You’re left in this weird middle space: not quite numb, not quite alive. Just suspended.
There’s rhythm and energy in tracks like “Were We Once Lovers?” and “Help Yourself”—an uneasy energy, like it’s still brooding but not inert. Then there’s the twinkly “Hey Lucinda,” with its surprising inclusion of steel drums in the latter half. There’s enough going on to offer a decent bit of variety upon further inspection (and to not come across as an overly depressive package), but a lot of the album revels in minimalism and building tension that never resolves.
Nowhere is this better seen than on “Second Chance Man”. This is the one that guts me. Every time. It’s so minimal, so quietly devastating—keyboard dragging its feet, vocals that feel like they were recorded through a sigh. There’s no big release. No obvious hook. Just that tension stretching thin and staying there. The music is soft and rounded, almost muffled, which gives it this weary, floating quality—almost as if you can hear the space around it more than the instruments themselves. And I don’t know why it hits so hard, but it does. Maybe it’s how honest it feel: like someone barely holding themselves together, but not asking for help either. It’s not dramatic, it’s not flashy, but it knows sadness. It knows regret.
Some of the lines that stick with me most aren’t the loud ones—they’re the little throwaways. Like in “Hey Lucinda”, when Lhasa de Sela sings, “I only dance to remember how dancing used to feel.” There’s this ache behind it, like she’s trying to recapture something already gone. Then on “We Are Dreamers!” you’ve got “This is not us, not us, we are dreamers!”—a kind of desperate chant, trying to hold onto some last scrap of idealism. And of course, Second Chance Man has maybe the saddest line of all: “I found love before I could identify it.” Simple, yet evocative. And it kind of lays out what the whole record is about
: regret, the weight of our memories, and that bittersweet knowledge that we can’t go back.
Not every track lands the same. Some slip past, others linger. But the tone—the restraint, the weariness, the subtle detail—that’s the glue. You have to be in the mood for it, or maybe a little worn down already. But when it meets you where you are, it leaves something behind. It’s not trying to blow your mind. It’s just trying to sit with you a while, without saying too much. It doesn’t shout to be heard—but if you give it time, it ends up saying a lot, and stands as one of the band’s finest albums.
