Half Gringa Shares 'No Kind Of Fire' Single from 'Ancestral Home' EP

Out today, Half Gringa's new single "No Kind Of Fire" is a haunting rumination on family, trauma, and forgiveness that serves as the final preview of her Ancestral Home EP due to release on January 27.

Frontwoman Isabel Olive offers, "This song is about how memory contributes to our perception of ourselves and our families. It's a song I started writing almost a decade ago as a reflection of how blood ties can affect how we love, and how we love can affect what we pass onto progeny through our memories. Understanding how trauma affects our present selves in addition to what of our ancestors it awakens is crucial to forgiveness, acceptance, and the promise of change within us."

The name Half Gringa stems from Olive's childhood term of endearment as "la Gringa" in her Venezuelan family, as well as her bicultural experience growing up in the midwestern United States where she was "really into alternative rock, but heard a lot of country music in the supermarket."

While Half Gringa typically records as a full-band arrangement, Ancestral Home serves as a more intimate, remote collaboration between Olive, co-producer Nicholas Papaleo (Gia Margaret, Campdogzz), and drummer Abby Black (Lala Lala, Date Stuff).

Olive recently appeared on WTTW's Latino Voices program to discuss the project and perform a solo session at Color Club in Irving Park. In celebration of the EP, Half Gringa will play a release show at Sleeping Village on April 30 with special guest Jessica Mindrum.

The release of "No Kind Of Fire" follows a music video for EP standout "Miranda" last fall. Remezcla praised, "The Chicago singer/songwriter puts into melody a poetic reflection of the different identities within herself...all set to the sound of a cloudy alt-rock-informed indie pop instrumental that sparks with a muscular rhythm section and a thin veil of overdrive."

Uproxx went on to add that Half Gringa "combines Mitski's emotional wit with Katy Kirby's mesmerizing lilt" and deemed her "The Midwest's Breakout Pondering Latina Poet" in a recent Indie Mixtape 20 feature. Half Gringa previously shared EP single "Sevenwater" in 2021, which Chicago Reader calls "an achingly tender ballad."

Of Ancestral Home, Olive offers, "The process of writing and recording the last two records was way faster, partly because I had my full band collaborators learning and arranging songs I brought to them. But I wrote for so long on my own before I even started playing with a band, and I felt moved to revisit that. I love collaborating, but at heart, I'm very introverted. Having a rich inner life is essential to me, which I think can overlap with both collaboration and solitude. I sense that each project I work on demands something different from me, and I've been trying to listen to my own instincts for that more and more. Sometimes it needs to be a party and sometimes it needs to be small, internal observations...Some people have asked why I wouldn't release this record as a solo project, which I think is funny. Without these kinds of songs, the ones with full band arrangements wouldn't exist. At its core, it's me and my creative work, which I've named Half Gringa."

Ancestral Home is the first body of work released by Half Gringa since her sophomore full-length, Force To Reckon, which features fellow rising Chicago artist Gia Margaret. Vice listed it among "22 Essential Albums You May Have Missed in 2020" praising, "There are few artists who can make introspection so vividly-rendered as Olive," with The FADER adding, "Her songcraft strikes a perfect balance between modest Midwestern alt-rock and sweeping balladic melody." Olive debuted her Half Gringa project with the locally acclaimed 2017 album Gruñona: one of Chicago Magazine's 10 Best Albums of the Year and one of Chicago Reader's Best Chicago Albums of the Decade.

Listen to the new single here:

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