Hataałii - Waiting for a Sign (2024) Hi-Res

Hataałii - named "2023's breakout star" by SPIN - returns with the announcement of a new album Waiting for a Sign, out September 13. Waiting for a Sign is Hataałii’s second album for Dangerbird following 2023’s Singing Into Darkness and, counting an array of self-released projects, his sixth album since 2019. Singing Into Darkness won plaudits from SPIN, FLOOD (“Hataałii is utterly charming, disarmingly approachable, and delightful in his playfulness”), and KCRW, and was named one of Aquarium Drunkard’s favorite albums of the year. With Waiting for a Sign, Hataałii’s careful, artful, perhaps unconscious topicality — his ability to write songs that don’t proselytize or scold but prioritize depth and uncanny particularities and the desire to know the unknowable — marks him as a genuinely thrilling songwriter, someone whose prolific and imaginative output demands close appreciation.

A quick scan of Hataałiinez Wheeler's bio conjures thoughts of music that's dystopian and a depressing, downbeat ride. But Hataałii's (Najavo for "singer") self-produced second album is tuneful, upbeat, and—despite often obtuse lyrics—really happy. While echoes of Nick Cave and Lou Reed are prominent, gentle electric guitar melodic songs like "Brown Fool Eyes," where he tries to see the world in a more optimistic light, are soothing and meant to be appealing. Hataałii, a Navajo from Window Rock, Arizona, wrote all the songs and performs all the music as a one-man band. With rising pedal steel guitar murmurs in the background that's more of an exhausted lament, "Burn," despite its title, is a gentle tale. He introduces his signature vocal move, an enthusiastically crooned swoon that rises for emphasis, on "Brown Fool Eyes," which comes close to being jangle pop. In "Go Ahead and Try," steadily strummed electric guitars bounce along as the vocals of this eccentric artist turn playful as he shares, "My phone's a dusty bone … We walked out of that hole/ Walking our toes home." "Buckskin Boy" echoes the dance beats of U.K. synth pop and that stylistic turn continues on "Something's in the Air." In tunes like "Near The Sea," and especially the opener, "Alex Jones," Hataałii takes his vocals into what he refers to as a "a deep voice thing like Waylon Jennings." While clearly concerned about larger issues, Hataałii's lyrics never address the topic head-on, preferring oblique angles as in "Alex Jones," which concludes with: "But I'm just a fragment/ Of institution/ Manipulation/ Of the nation/ Of an old meat packing plant." A mix of carefully constructed songs, perfectionist playing, and a deliberate low-key delivery gives Hataalii's dark wanderings a bright musical future.