Rosali’s Slow Pain
I need to start with a confession: I made a big mistake skipping out on Bite Down, Rosali Middleman’s critically-adored Merge Records debut, when it came out last year: it’s every bit as rich and wonderful as I was told and is completely wreaking havoc on my top 10 albums of 2024 list.
True to its maniacal cover art, it’s an album crawling with kudzu-like growers – growers that softly nestle in your ear and slowly take root in your brain until they blossom with the kind of vivid, rich detail that obsession-worthy albums have.
Slow Pain: Live and Solo from Drop of Sun is essentially a skeletal retelling of Bite Down, featuring all but two of its songs, plus the standalone single “Hey Heron.”
Press materials claim that Rosali performed these songs solo in front of a small audience at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville earlier this spring. Where I have zero reason to doubt that actually happened, I only imagine what the exchange between Rosali and her audience was like that night, ‘cause they’re nowhere to be found here.
There’s no clapping, no between-song banter, not even a stray cough – either those in attendance forgot to breathe for 40 minutes (possible, given Rosali’s talent!), or there was a conscious choice to pickle and preserve only Rosali’s voice and guitar for this recording.
While that intimacy gives listeners an opportunity to burrow even further into the nooks and crannies of Rosali’s meticulous songwriting, it’s not an excavation my heart is personally suited for.
Rosali (photo courtesy of Merge Records)
These are emotionally potent songs, full of longing and hard truths and goodbyes and miscommunication. If you’re even a little self-aware, a line like “If I wounded you, I can be hellish and awful too” can swallow your heart like a trapdoor.
Rosali’s backing band, Mowed Sound, helped camouflage these vulnerable moments on Bite Down with a loose, live wire groove that you could raise a couple beers to on a Friday night.
There’s no such cushion on Slow Pain – Rosali is no less commanding without her band, but hearing these songs stripped back to their rawest forms is almost confrontational: there’s an aching heaviness to this performance that makes me squirm a bit.
This is especially evident on “My Kind.” On Bite Down, “My Kind” is the Crazy Horse-like shitstarter, the parade-down the street ode to picking up the pieces after someone special leaves the picture.
On Slow Pain, “My Kind” is just flat out devastating. It feels like an open wail, a moment where someone’s absence hits like a meteor, and you’re left to gape and mourn the crater.
There’s plenty of other rich new details to drink in – the way Rosali hangs a little longer on “I know this” in the chorus of “Hopeless,” the way “Bite Down” trades soulful groove for stark slowcore, the way “On Tonight” feels more lonely than romantic.
“A big part of what I’m trying to do is connect with people and connect on an emotional level,” Middleman told Paste last year. “That’s why I sing like that, and that’s something that I have tried to really embrace about the natural quality of my voice and develop that as my strength as a musician.”
That goal is evident on Slow Pain, and probably explains why the crowd is so muted on this recording – how are you supposed to react when a musician effortlessly transmutes pain and loss and feeling like a fuck up in a performance?
Powerful as it is, I can’t help but prefer the warmer, richer details of the studio versions of these songs – there are times when Slow Pain’s starkness can border on feeling sterile and I find myself checking out on repeat listens.
That said, it’s a must-listen for fans who know Bite Down front-to-back and are itching for new angles to hear these stellar songs. Just don’t go in feeling too tender – you might come out more bruised than anticipated.
By Reed Strength
