Description:
No Medium by Rosali, released 07 May 2021
1. Mouth
2. Bones
3. Pour Over Ice
4. Waited All Day
5. All This Lightning
6. Whisper
7. If Not For Now
8. Whatever Love
9. Your Shadow
10. Tender Heart
While the collection of songs on Philadelphia/Michigan musician Rosaliâs electrifying third LP, No Medium, explores the often dark territory of loss, death, sexuality, self-sabotage, and addiction, there is a surprising lightness to its sonic being. Backed by members of the David Nance Group, Rosali (Long Hots, Wandering Shade, Monocot) wades through the emotional mire with infectious, earworm melodies led by her luminou
No Medium by Rosali, released 07 May 2021
1. Mouth
2. Bones
3. Pour Over Ice
4. Waited All Day
5. All This Lightning
6. Whisper
7. If Not For Now
8. Whatever Love
9. Your Shadow
10. Tender Heart
While the collection of songs on Philadelphia/Michigan musician Rosaliâs electrifying third LP, No Medium, explores the often dark territory of loss, death, sexuality, self-sabotage, and addiction, there is a surprising lightness to its sonic being. Backed by members of the David Nance Group, Rosali (Long Hots, Wandering Shade, Monocot) wades through the emotional mire with infectious, earworm melodies led by her luminous voice. With their rich, raw instrumentation, these rock ballads sound like the resilience discovered in facing oneâs darkest moments, the assurance of the calm and clarity that comes after the storm. As she sings on the second track, âBones,â âThrough the darkness of the field / I walk through without yielding / To the rest of the feelings / Iâm carrying.â With her confident song craft, Rosali illustrates the ability to push through, moving toward something greater without being destroyed by the weight of trauma.
Rosali wrote the bulk of these songs in January of 2019 while on a self-imposed two week residency in the hills of South Carolina. Alone in an old farmhouse, she experienced supernatural events and faced her own demons in the deepest darkness. Perhaps as a result, there is a boldness that permeates the album, a daring vulnerability in both the lyrical themes and their musical accompaniment. Rosali says, âI approach guitar playing the same intuitive way I sing, which is profoundly spiritual for me. Where words fail, the guitar becomes the conduit for raw feelings, providing a direct connection to them. Iâm constantly working on being fearless in my work, which means showing the rough side, the mistakes along with the triumphs.â
While writing No Medium, Rosali was inspired by harmonographsâswinging pendulums that create beautiful illustrations of the mathematics of musicâconsidering how the mind, too, creates images through song. She imagined herself as the swinging pendulumââa body suspended from a fixed pointâ (Encyclopedia Britannica), governed by the forces surrounding her. She thought about the pendulumâs relationship to time, movement, and even its use in divination practices. The albumâs title, lifted from Charlotte BrontĂ«âs, Jane Eyre, resonated with this vision: âI know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other.â With the multiple meanings of âmediumââas middle ground, a term for psychics, and as the material of artistic expressionâNo Medium felt like the appropriate name, describing how the self is shaped by the patterns of life .
The influences for the sound of No Medium reflect this pairing of assured vulnerability, in the stylistic coherence of Bob Dylanâs Desire, the tender delivery in Iain Matthewsâ Journey From Gospel Oak, the strut and swagger of Bowieâs Hunky Dory, the ambition and beauty of Gene Clarkâs No Other, and the playful catharsis of Harry Nilssonâs Nilsson Schmilsson. The Richard and Linda Thompson-esque album opener âMouth,â places Rosali within both a physical and emotional space. âEast of the river I was travelling on / watch me lie, undone / rest me in a forest, overgrown / until I am free of all that Iâve known,â she sings. There is movement, both within a cityscape, and in her outlook on love. Speaking of her thought process when writing the song, she says, âI imagine confidently walking away from the past, toward a new approach to love and intimacy to achieve a closer relationship with myself.â
In âPour Over Ice,â Rosali explores her relationship with alcohol and her former reliance upon it as a social lubricant to quell her social anxiety, an energizer to keep moving, a means to cope and self-medicate, and most addictively, to lure out her wild side as a free flowing, good time girl. While drinking helped her through some shitty times, it eventually got the upper hand and became an insatiable hole within. She says, âThe âyouâ in the song is really me, talking to that component of myself struggling with drinking and self-sabotage, caught up in the cycle, and all the bad choices I made.â She sings, âMaybe I didnât care enough / or canât remember / chasing small pleasures / making fire from embers.â Rosali wanted her lead guitar on this track to simultaneously sound like a slow motion car crash propelling her through the day, and the sound of a gnawing hunger for something more.
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