As Hesitant Waitress, indie chanteuse Emma Branch is building a tantalizing case as one of the best songwriters to emerge from Orlando in a very long time. But the full-length consummation of that promise remains agonizingly elusive. Under construction for about two years running, Hesitant Waitress’s long-gestating debut album, by now, borders on mythical.
Yet this is not about that Moby Dick of an album, which still looms somewhere on the horizon. This is, instead, about a pair of new, unexpected Hesitant Waitress releases. Branch dropped two recent EPs — War and Cheap Seats — within about a week of each other. The songs seemingly came from out of the blue but were actually excavated from some deep recesses of her life. Although not necessarily intended for release at first, this unearthed material from several years ago now emerges as a pair of sister EPs.
“I honestly never expected any of these songs to see the light of day,” says Branch. “I worked on them initially because I was going through a bad depressive episode and it made me feel better to put my moods into tangible form. The content of the lyrics is partly about my struggle with bipolar I, which I was diagnosed with when I was 15.”
But it gets deeper, and darker. “I lost a childhood friend to suicide when we were both around 22 and he also had bipolar I,” she says. “In many ways, Cheap Seats and War are me trying to reconcile why he did it and the loss I’ve felt in my life since then.”
As such, these lyrics loom with complex mood. Still, Branch’s innate melodicism musters light even in shadow with effortless Fear of Men-esque grace. Among ruminative ballads like “Control” are tall pop sweeps like “The Fishbowl,” “Exoskeleton” and “Peacin Out.” The star of the lot, “Cheap Seats,” is a twinkling guitar-pop gem that splits the lovely difference between twee pop and dream pop.
“They feel like a fever dream when I listen back,” says Branch. “It’s been a hard process for me emotionally to work on these songs and a big part of me has always resisted sharing them, but it’s time.”
For her, these songs are personal reckonings of complicated life chapters. For us, the two companion EPs are a generous stopgap until Hesitant Waitress’ album materializes. Cheap Seats and War are streaming everywhere.
