Rosali’s Vibrant, Sobering Vulnerability – The North Carolina-based musician talks about her elaborate, methodical chemistry with Mowed Sound, leaving Philadelphia and finding tranquility in nature and honest songwriting on Bite Down.
By Matt Mitchell for Paste Magazine –
Photo by Asia Harman
Rosali Middleman’s new album, Bite Down, is canonically not a break-up album. “I was single for seven years while writing it,” the North Carolina-based musician tells me over Zoom. “The cohesiveness is me connecting to myself on a whole new level. I’ve been sober, I’ve been single—it’s that ‘getting right with yourself’ perspective, where it’s very much from a perspective with distance.” Her last album, 2021’s No Medium, was very much an “in your feelings” project, but without as much clarity as you’ll hear when tapping into Bite Down. “There’s a maturity to where I’m at now and much more clarity and distance from those feelings,” Rosali continues. “I can be direct, and I’ve examined things from all their angles. That’s where I’m at.”
That much is true. Lead single “Rewind,” though it elicits flickers of some standstill romantic dissolution, is not informed by heartbreak at all. The “I’ll rewind for you” lyric was actually inspired by Rosali’s dog. “I was walking with her, and I just started singing it to her,” she says. “She was a really challenging puppy, but I liked the idea of ‘Well, I’d still rewind for you. This is all still worth it.’” From there, the song transformed into a broader take on having no regrets and being open and willing to still love and interact with the past. When she wrote “My Kind,” Rosali was thinking about her old band Long Hots and Philadelphia and “the connections you have in life.”
After spending more than a decade in Philadelphia, the pandemic hit and Rosali bounced around briefly—decamping to her native state of Michigan for a moment before retreating to the rural outskirts of Durham, North Carolina. She took time off from making art for a while, only to return with an album where it’s clear that, miraculously, every note is major and not a second is wasted. When talking about 2020 and 2021, Rosali is careful with her words—using “turmoil” before correcting herself and saying “upheaval.” It’s the same kind of nuance and composure that leaks into her lyricism, too. Everything is deliberate, expressive and, while the world was locked inside and unsure of what phase would come next, Rosali, like the rest of us, was facing a similar existential uncertainty, questioning what she might say that is not only universal but connects with people—all without doing it heavy-handedly and placing importance on being intentional.
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https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/rosali/rosalis-vibrant-sobering-vulnerability?mc_cid=f45449192c
