Rachel Haymer Examines the Geography of Belonging on Island Girl Reflections II

There is an important distinction between nostalgia and memory. Nostalgia asks us to return; memory allows us to move forward while acknowledging what remains. Rachel Haymer’s Island Girl Reflections II exists confidently in the latter space, examining identity as an accumulation of places, relationships, losses and reinventions.

Raised in Honolulu and now deeply embedded in New York City, Haymer could easily have framed the album around the contrast between island life and Manhattan. Instead, she offers something more sophisticated. If the original Island Girl Reflections documented the courage required to leave Hawaii, its companion considers what happens afterward: the realization that transformation does not demand erasure.

Place consequently becomes both setting and metaphor. On Solo Rollo Soho, Haymer finds herself navigating Manhattan after her phone dies, turning a charming urban mishap into a subtle meditation on instinct and self-reliance. Summer Coney Island considers the freedom that comes with relinquishing control, while New Daylight approaches faith and manifestation with an optimism grounded in lived experience rather than easy affirmation.

The album’s emotional register deepens considerably on The Adventure, which revisits Haymer’s time in Germany and a formative relationship ultimately marked by loss. Till the Morning Come explores intimacy and vulnerability, while Love Song for the Disconnected Child, inspired by her work within the disability and inclusion community, expands into a moving consideration of the universal desire to be recognized and understood.

Memory assumes musical form on Rather Have You, co-written with Rory Michelle Sullivan. Its Hawaiian steel guitar carries the influence of the late Uncle Joe Espinda, a Hawaiian elder and reggae keyboardist who encouraged Haymer and heard the completed album before his passing. Here, instrumentation becomes more than ornamentation; it becomes remembrance.

Musically, Island Girl Reflections II is equally interested in dissolving boundaries. Haymer draws from the narrative traditions of Joni Mitchell and Carole King, the melodic sophistication of Rachmaninoff, and the rhythmic vocabulary of reggae artists such as Fiji and J Boog. Her classical background and study of Hawaiian ukulele give the record an unusual harmonic breadth, while improvisational sessions with ManaTones encouraged her to move beyond familiar songwriting structures.

Most importantly, Haymer refuses to treat the ukulele as shorthand for either Hawaii or whimsy. In her hands, it becomes a serious compositional voice capable of carrying emotionally complex material.

That expansive philosophy reflects an equally unconventional career. Haymer has spent more than two decades performing everywhere from concert halls and international festivals to houses of worship, memory care communities and New York City subway platforms. Her years performing The Ukulele Time Machine for commuters seem particularly relevant: Haymer’s music has always been concerned less with where it is performed than with whom it might reach.

Ultimately, Island Girl Reflections II rejects the idea that Haymer must choose between the identities she has accumulated. Hawaii remains present. So does New York. So do love, grief, spirituality, community and the people who have shaped her.

The result is an intelligent and deeply humane record about the geography of belonging—one that suggests home may not be the place to which we eventually return, but everything we become capable of carrying with us.