"Wither" is the title track and final track of HAFFWAY's debut album, and bringing in Benjamin Francis Leftwich for it is the right call. Leftwich, the York, England-born singer-songwriter who made his name in the early 2010s with a series of spare, aching folk records, carries a similar emotional weight in his voice to what Sam Westhoff brings as HAFFWAY. They are not doing the same thing, but they are operating from the same understanding of what a quietly devastating song needs. Ending an album called Wither with a track of the same name requires the song to justify the whole project's name. It does. The collaboration deepens the track rather than widening it: two voices, same space, no overcrowding. The arrangement stays minimal to the end. Leftwich has said that he found writing and recording easier after recovering from addiction, and there is a quality in his work since then that sounds like someone who knows exactly what they almost lost. That quality adds something specific to this collaboration.
HAFFWAY, Benjamin Francis Leftwich