ALBUM REVIEW: With ‘Waiting for a Sign,’ Hataali Paints the Sunset of America

If Sleater-Kinney and David Bowie wrote a song in the Arizona desert, the result might sound like Hataałii’s “Something’s in the Air.”  

“Hand in hand should see it through / Oh, I got some news for you,” Hataałii sings over the track’s propulsive pep. “Sometimes life ain’t easy, Sioux / for people who look like me and you.” He’s a purveyor of slippery lyrics that could be interpreted any number of ways. “Something’s in the Air,” for instance, could be about the Sacred Stone Camp in Standing Rock, North Dakota – or it could be more general to the Native experience under white supremacy in the U.S.

“It’s a hard, hard way,” Hataałii croons. “To sing the same, same song every day.”

The dreamy, hallucinatory Waiting for a Sign is a soundtrack to the end of America, penned by an artist born well into its slow collapse. Some tracks echo the spacious, sparsely populated desert of Hataałii’s Window Rock, Arizona, home. Some echo the cosmopolitan lounge lizard apocalypse of Destroyer’s Kaputt. Hataałii, the stage name of 21-year-old Hataałiinez Wheeler, alternates between surrealist, cryptic and heartfelt lyrics – often within the same verse – to create impressionistic washes. 

Rather than tell stories with his music, Hataałii is painting the sunset of America.

“Before the ships set sail and landed at our feet / before the world was new and its name was cast along / and all the people burned in the heat of his song,” Hataałii sings to the dreamy wash of “Burn.” Like Grandaddy’s Blu Wav, “Burn” is an enveloping, downtempo moodscape populated by quirky imagery and frequent flashes of insight.

“Go Ahead and Try” pairs Dadaist lyrics with Johnny Marr-esque guitar, while Hataałii plants a Neil Young-style chord progression beneath “In My Lawn.” There’s a lot of ‘80s to this chorus-heavy album, from the slow dance number “Love is Over” to the Cure vibe of “Buckskin Boy.”

Ultimately, though, Waiting for a Sign is anchored in slow apocalypses, such as the end-stage capitalism Hataałii’s generation inherited. “Being born out of evil / under the infinite critic,” he sings to the summery shuffle of “Ballad of Athabaskan Theory.” Or the apocalypse could be circular, as a young songwriter in the Navajo capital watches the United States collapse under the weight of its own systems.

“So you cry for the sunset, “ he sings. “For a dream that came and went.”

Hataali’s Waiting for a Sign is due Sep. 13 from Dangerbird Records.