by Emma Ingrisani
From her early (and ongoing) band Long Hots, to experimental gambits Monocot and Edsel Axle, to her new, breakthrough solo record Bite Down, there's a decisive unshowiness to Rosali Middleman's musicianship. In all of these excellent, distinctive projects, and especially in her solo work as Rosali, there's been a subtle resistance to, or disinterest in, the crafting of persona—the establishing of some monolithic musical self. Instead, she has tended to choose ideas and arrangements that are a little more complicated, weird, and multidirectional than they initially appear. Bite Down is at once Rosali's most broadly appealing work to date and her boldest dive into those complicated and weird pursuits. It makes for a record that's not only beautifully realized, but full of surprising, lingering impressions.
Rosali's collaboration with David Nance's versatile and dynamic Mowed Sound band becomes the current through which each song is animated. The compositions are hers, she sings throughout, and she fires off smoking, deconstructionist guitar solos here and there, but her presence never feels entirely singular. Instead, the feeling is of Rosali playing with, and sometimes becoming indistinguishable from, the band around her. This closely enmeshed quality is put to brilliant use on early tracks "Rewind," "Hills on Fire," and especially "On Tonight," a progression from anxious, Brownian syncopation to dreamy psych groove. With elegantly oblique lyrics, it achieves a delicate balance of sweetness and cynicism: evoking Christine McVie's most starry-eyed songs for Fleetwood Mac, but keeping its giddiness in check.
The most potent song of the ensemble's dynamic is also its simplest: the kinetic "My Kind," its first few seconds capturing each musician tuning in tentatively before hurtling forward in tandem. Rosali's voice is strikingly bitter here, and her words bluntly sad: "How'm I gonna live without you?" she howls desperately. Even at this intense emotional pitch, she remains immersed in the mix, jostling among the piano, guitar, and drums until the song shudders to a halt, the players dropping out one by one.
On 2021's No Medium, Rosali's vocals leaned softer and sweeter as her guitar got tougher, and the reverb thicker. Amid the prevailing sonic warmth and mellowness of Bite Down, a more defined voice sometimes comes through: narrower, harder-edged, even a little mean. On the strangely lovely, Velvet Underground-influenced "Is It Too Late"—a kind of through-the-looking-glass, Americana take on "Heroin"—her faint sneer sharpens to a Reed-esque kiss-off: “You were hardly a friend.”
No one song on the record sounds much like the others, and as her role in the ensemble shifts from song to song, Rosali's voice and vantage point shifts, too. Rather than being an inconsistency, this is a unique, characteristic strength of Rosali's artistry. With Bite Down, she becomes multitudinous.