Hataałii

Thanks to the New Mexico Music Commission and the Friends of the Public Library for funding these library shows!

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Hataałii—the singer, songwriter, and poet born Hataałiinez Wheeler in Window Rock, AZ, the capital of Navajo Nation—arrived just in time to witness American collapse. Not a galvanizing, grand explosion of empire but a paralysis-inducing decay and alienation that infects the American body politic. Zealotry repurposed into a new cultural crusade every week. Reality-building and delusion affirmation masquerading as liberty. The show-horse ladder of success. Pandora's Box purchased on credit, driving everyone mad in different ways, algorithmically determined to suit your unique neuroses.

It's from this vantage point that Hataałii brings us Waiting For A Sign, a heady collection of ghost town anthems, short story mirages, and brain fog-clearing personal reckonings. At times it recalls the playfully languid puzzlement of Pavement's Wowee Zowee, the trickster melancholy of Lou Reed's The Blue Mask, the economical yet winking earnestness of Blaze Foley, or the softer Spacemen 3 songs that cast awe and mystery against a droning, endless atmosphere. But, as easy as the tempos can get, Hataałii operates with purpose: the obscurantist details come into focus, giving way to trenchant observations about paranoia, accountability, and post-colonial fallout.