June 30, 2021
No Medium
Rosali
Spinster SOUNDs

The first time I saw Rosali Middleman perform live, with her Philadelphia-based trio the Long Hots, my immediate (and perhaps only) thought was, ‘Wow, this rocks.’

Garage rock is a crowded and heavily-mined genre, but this band, with its minimalist setup, felt fresh and liberatory and sturdy all at once.

Middleman’s solo work is comparatively idiosyncratic, more Lauryl Canyon than South Philly bar. In the Long Hots, her speak-singing falls somewhere between Iggy and Ana De Silva; Alone her range expands into richer, deeper tones. It’s still noisy  — it still rocks! — and no music writer can seem to talk about it without mentioning Crazy Horse, and fair enough. 

Loud, fuzzy, capacious guitar has been a throughline in Middleman’s solo work. Even the relatively stripped-down indie-rock sound of 2016’s Out of Love hinted at some of No Medium’s freewheeling jamminess. Trouble Anyway, from 2018, was — in classic sophomore fashion — more confident, more produced, and bolstered by a who's who of Philadelphia-adjacent musicians (Steve Gunn, Mary Lattimore, etc). 

In early 2019, Middleman holed-up for two weeks in a South Carolina farmhouse, where she wrote the bulk of No Medium. That retreat, by her account, involved some personal demon-facing, as well as broader “supernatural events.” Hauntings, in other words, can exist both inside and out, and this is a record that deals with both. 

In “Pour Over Ice,” one of No Medium’s strongest tracks, Middleman confronts a once-useful, later fraught relationship with alcohol, addressing those parts of herself that seem to be slipping into a boozy blurr. “Lately I do not remember you/quite as well as I once was able to” she sings, taking a steady but scenic melodic route overtop a burst of disonnent guitars. 

This is likely the track that people think of when they bring up Neil Young: Middleman has said that she wanted her lead guitar to sound like a slow-motion car crash, and also like a gnawing hunger for something more. Despite descriptions of blind eyes and brains in the blender, this isn’t a story of hitting rock-bottom. It’s about a subtler, slower and (given how many of my friends got sober in 2020) highly relatable kind of self-sabotage. 

Middleman’s backing band for No Medium is made up of members of the Nebraska-based David Nance Group, who Middleman bonded with on tour with the Long Hots. Nance and co. bring some heavy psychedelia to the mix while helping to amplify —  literally and figuratively — the wilder, woolier elements of Middleman’s songwriting. No Medium was recorded in ten days in a basement in Omaha, a feat that speaks to the outfit’s chemistry and skill. 

There may be nothing more intimate than a song written to oneself, which Middlman often does, though outside characters do show up here and there: “See, I’m trying to deal/with your sex appeal/if I shrug it off/I still feel what I feel” she tells a roughly-sketched lover in “Waited All Day,” a song that brings to mind the smooth, subdued melancholy of Jackson Browne and the lyrical (if not melodic) straight-shooting of Aimee Mann. 

On mellow rocker “Whatever Love,” Middleman addresses a breakup with a mix of sadness and swagger: “All I have is your silence/Fuck off with your fear/Say whatever you will/Cuz I’m ready to hear.”

The record title references a quote from Jane Eyre: “I 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.” 

To have no medium is to reject complacency and compromise, for better or for worse. And for better or worse — sometimes joyfully, sometimes less-so — Middleman always returns to herself. Even when, as she sings in “Bones,” it means going back home, and being alone.
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No Medium was released in May 2021 on Spinster Sounds and is available for purchase here.

June 30, 2021
Big $ilky Vol. 3
Big $ilky

The third release from Big $ilky might well be the last: if so, collaborators Psalm One and Angel Davanport close their trilogy with an absolute scorcher. 

A lot has happened since the release of Vol. 1 in April 2020. The duo wrote that record to celebrate their friend and fellow MC, Henny B, who died in 2018. It’s a powerful tribute — Psalm One has said they specifically chose beats and melodies that Henny would have liked rapping over — and it somehow never slips into sentimentality, and never loses its chill. 

Vol. 2 was a more visceral affair, written in the middle of last summer’s uprising in Minneapolis, where Psalm and Angel both live. “It was like, all angry and fuck the police and all that,” Psalm One said in an interview with writer Issac Lee. 

“I think Vol. 3 is more about, okay, we’ve just gotten through this … It’s really about the aftermath of thinking about … where are we now?”

Psalm One also spent much of 2020 at the forefront of a boycott of her former label, Rhymesayers, where she was the only female and openly queer artist. She alleges that the label (at best) enabled and (at worst) facilitated a wide range of mistreatment, disrespect and abuse, and ultimately pushed her out. (You can read her full account in a piece she wrote called “Ain't No Human Resources in Hip Hop”). “See, I don’t align with no coward/cause i used to be one,” she declares in Vol. 3 opener “Jesse Got Away.” Who does she trust now? “My God and my 9.”

Both veteran rappers and activists, Psalm One and Davanport are uniquely positioned to call out toxicity in both worlds, and this record deals sharply with hypocrisy from all corners. 

“Watch out for some of these allies/Watch out for some of these bad guys/Watch out for most of these good guys/They let the truth and the good die,” Psalm One cautions dryly in “Allyship Fatigue,” calling out “clout demons” and goulish leaders before Angel breaks in with a promise: “I’m gone be angry, and dangerous/Don’t play my time or donations/Quite frankly this shit is outrageous/So talk to me nice or get out of my face.”

On “McNothing” — a reference to the burning of golden arches during the Minneapolis protests, as well as the viral video of a police officer blubbering that she “just wants some McDonalds” — Angel’s bars again function as a mission statement: “Abolishing amerikka is how I’m finna live, look/ain’t nobody free till we all free, kid.” Psalm One comes in, dispensing incisive political commentary in her velvety flow. “Biden is hands-y/Kamala 12,” she raps, dismissing the idea that Trump’s loss offers meaningful relief. “What did we win now???”

Riffing at the end of “Jesse Got Away,” Psalm One suggests that she’s the Walter White to Angel’s Jesse Pinkman, and the analogy checks out. Psalm One, who has a degree in chemistry, rhymes like the scientist that she is: methodical, incredulous, thorough, curious. Angel is wilder in her tones and moods, sharp and sugary and always on her toes.

The Big $ilky trilogy represents past, present and future, respectively. “2020 taught me boundaries and bravado,” Psalm One says, on “Released from Contract,” hinting that with little left to lose, her best work is ahead of her.  If you’re implicated by these tracks, you’ll know and it may take more than posting an infographic about good allyship to atone. But — in music, and in the larger world — Psalm One and Davanport are more interested in liberation than in apologies.
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Big $ilky Vol. 3 was released in May 2021 and is available for purchase here.