#bite down

[nodnash]

Zine-o-ween day 3: bite down

[whumpypepsigal]

Walker Independence s01e13: “Stay with us, Gus. It’s okay.”

[dustedmagazine]

Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)

Rosali Middleton experienced a lot of change in the lead up to recording her fourth solo album, Bite Down. She relocated to North Carolina and changed labels to Merge Records. Some constants remain. Her collaboration with Mowed Sound, a group of players who work with a number of artists, continues. The recording is also augmented by keyboardist Ted Bois, who melds well with the rest of the musicians.

Rosali’s interest in experimentation, which she has explored under other monikers, has gradually infiltrated her solo work. She goes the furthest to date towards it on Bite Down, which includes noise elements that distress the edges of songs that could easily be successfully presented in more straightforward contexts.Pinpointing Rosali as rock or folk or country is overly reductive. She takes things song by song, with varying styles and approaches.

The album opens with “On Tonight,” featuring briskly overlapping rhythm guitar riffs, some by Mowed Sound, but Rosali plays guitar as well as sings. There is an arcing  melody in synth strings and, a signature for Bite Down, multi-tracked vocals. Rosali’s voice has an impressive range, from low alto to dulcet soprano. “Rewind” is a love song with lyrics about seeking stability in a romance. Its chorus provides a memorable hook: “I love you, And I know you love me too, Be the same you, I’ll rewind for you.”

“Hills on Fire” is one of my favorite songs on Bite Down. Country adjacent, it features a keening vocal melody and East Nashvillian arrangement. The extended slide guitar introduction is succeeded by a winsome vocal and several solo breaks. This is Rosali’s voice at its most gentle, cooing in her upper register.

The title track is something of a feature for Bois, whose electric piano sets a mid-tempo syncopated groove buoyed by the rhythm section, and synths that add sustained tones ghosting the vocals. Mowed Sound particularly distinguishes themselves here. Biting down is taken here as grasping at what’s real, with which the narrator struggles. There’s also a veiled reference to Virginia Woolf’s suicide: “I keep on walking, Putting rocks in my pocket, I’m drawn to the docks and Eternal Life.” Ultimately, we learn that it is a plea for help from a beloved: “Everything has a price, What’s it worth to you?” The music belies the sobering subject matter, but also lets us know there remains a suppleness of step that, we hope, will afford the narrator the courage to turn away from the water. “Is It Too Late” depicts the murky mornings of depression, with a resolve to keep going. Here, the moody guitar riff and florid singing match the challenges depicted in the lyrics.

Rocking out is on the menu, particularly evident on the penultimate track, “Change Is in the Form,” a doppelganger of a Neil Young song with attractive layered backing vocals juxtaposed with an inexorable groove and duo guitar solos. “Hopeless” has a strong backbeat and a number of instrumental breaks. It is about accepting the end of a relationship while remembering its previous laughter and joy. “Slow Pain” immediately follows, and its musical vibe and lyrics suggest it is a companion (estranged companion) song: “​Have you seen my grief? Hold it so I don’t spill out, Keep quiet and wait it out.” It has one of the most extended guitar solos on the album, which closes the song with verve and virtuosity. Such plaintive lyrics occasionally make bopping one’s head to the memorable tunes seem like a guilty pleasure. The connections between pleasure and pain seem to coalesce in much of Rosali’s work, and it is the better for it.

Bite Down ends with an extended song, “May it Be On Offer,” which clocks in at five and three-quarter minutes. It has a slow paced, loping rhythm, once again with overlapping guitars, both acoustic and electric, that presents a stark contrast to “Change Is In the Form.” Its vocal melody, again country adjacent in construction, sits in the mid-register, sung with a repeating melody in speech-like declamation. The lyrics depict contemplation of the struggles that have come before on the recording, with a pointed question asked by so many that serves as the album’s enigmatic close: ​​”And I’ll sit for hours, Gazing at the light, And I do wonder, If I waste my life. No, I don’t wonder, If I waste my life.”

This is for certain, no time is wasted listening, likely again and again, to Rosali’s compelling emotional journey on Bite Down.

Christian Carey

[thatnewcarsmeli]

My teeth

picture this, i give you a glass bottle and tell you to open it, but bottle openers are forbidden, how do you do it?

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[eastgaysian]

[canonkiller]

but you can't keep holding on like this.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Pitchfork Music Festival 2024: 6 Can’t-miss Non-headliner Sets

Jessica Pratt; Photo by Samuel Hess

BY JORDAN MAINZER

If you had told me in 2014 that a Grammy-friendly psych soul band, a producer who hasn't released an album in almost a decade, and, uh, Alanis Morissette were headlining Pitchfork Music Festival, my jaw would have dropped. Don't get me wrong: I was still surprised when I saw the lineup announcement. But overall, Pitchfork has been heading in a more populist, legacy-based, and pop-friendly direction for a while now, both as a publication and a summer festival. And while I'm just as excited as the next person to belt "Hand in My Pocket" and boogie to "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)", the undercard has always been where it's at for me. Here are 6 non-headliner sets you simply cannot afford to miss.

Photo by Asia Harman

FRIDAY

Rosali, 2:45 P.M., Blue Stage

Indie rocker Rosali Middleman leads her band, Mowed Sound, into what will hopefully be a sunny, yet shady set on Pitchfork's most underrated stage, an effective host for sounds both quiet and loud. Rosali's most recent album Bite Down (Merge) occupies a middle territory. Songs like "Hills on Fire", "Slow Pain", and "Rewind" sport that quintessential Rosali "hard won ease" but not before subtle freak-outs threaten your bliss. It's perfect late afternoon music.

Photo courtesy of Big Beat Records

100 Gecs, 6:15 P.M., Green Stage

The hyperpop duo of Dylan Brady and Laura Les are a year and change removed from releasing their incredible sophomore album 10,000 gecs (Dog Show/Atlantic) and are still touring strong off of that record's combination of earnestness and absurdism. Since we last previewed them, they officially released (via XL) their remix of the Basement Jaxx classic "Where's Your Head At", debuted during a Boiler Room set last year. Who knows what tricks they might pull mere hours before the sun sets on the first day of Pitchfork?

SATURDAY

Photo courtesy of Press

Kara Jackson, 2:30 P.M., Green Stage

Since we last caught the Oak Park singer-songwriter, she's simply toured the hell out of her stellar debut album Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? (September) and released a studio version of the cover song she tends to open her sets with: Karen Dalton’s “Right, Wrong or Ready”. But Jackson's hometown afternoon set at the Green Stage will be more than a victory lap. Judging by recent Instagram stories from album collaborators KAINA and Sen Morimoto, this may be a full-band show, more faithful to the full arrangements of the album than the acoustic sets Jackson's been giving. Really, it should be like hearing the record anew.

Photo by Brandon McClain

Wednesday, 4:15 P.M., Green Stage

Simply put, the Asheville country-gazers' Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans) was one of the finest albums of last year, with its mix of Southern poetry and steel guitar freak-outs. Live, they only amp up the urgency, lead vocalist Karly Hartzman morphing on a dime from yodel to scream as guitarist MJ Lenderman, lap steel player Xandy Chelmis, bassist Ethan Baechtold, and drummer Alan Miller build songs from a twangy choogle to a pummeling finish. Watch Wednesday with a beer in hand and take in their darkly humorous tales of desperation--and perhaps an inspired cover or two.

SUNDAY

Photo by Renee Parkhurst

Jessica Pratt, 4:15 P.M., Green Stage

You'll hear that Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer), singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt's long-awaited follow-up album to 2019's Quiet Signs, features a comparatively "expansive" sound. It's certainly true, the self-labeled perfectionist having taken three and a half years to make a less-than-30-minute album, one rife with echoing percussion and lush orchestration, featuring collaborators old and new. Watching the full-band performance of opening track "Life Is" from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert certainly has me excited to hear these songs come to life on a main Pitchfork stage. Ultimately, though, what mesmerizes me about Here in the Pitch, and Pratt in general, is how front and center she remains no matter how big the backing noise. Her wordless vocals curve around Al Carlson's baritone saxophone on "Better Hate". The all-encompassing quality of her singing matches the inherent eeriness of the organ and rippling drum machine on "Nowhere It Was". She even plays drums on "World on a String", her supposed take on teenage garage rock. A master of entities as concrete as wordplay and as abstract as vibes, she sings, "I want to be the sunlight of the century / I want to be a vestige of our senses free." May we all aspire to be that influential.

Photo by CJ Harvey

Mannequin Pussy, 5:15 P.M., Blue Stage

A new band member and new creative process help spur what may be Mannequin Pussy's best album to date. I Got Heaven (Epitaph), the follow-up LP to 2019's excellent Patience, was the band's first album with multi-instrumentalist Maxine Steen as a full-time member, and it was written in LA with prolific producer John Congleton instead of each band member writing separately at home. The result is a punk band as versatile as they've ever been, something that should stand out during their early evening Blue Stage set on the last day of Pitchfork. Sure, a pent-up crowd will want to yell, "Loud bark, deep bite!" back at Marisa Dabice, and the instantly quotable title track should yield cathartic live experiences till the end of time, whether or not you feel subsumed by Christian hypocrisy like the song's narrator does. But many of the highlights on I Got Heaven showcase the band's softer side. The bossa nova-esque guitars, sparkly synths, and brushed drums of "I Don't Know You" take their time to build up to enveloping shoegaze, while the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-inspired "Nothing Like" juxtaposes a shuffling drum beat with hazy, dreamy guitar akin to late 90s Smashing Pumpkins. And really, during Brat Girl Summer, what will be more anthemic than these words Dabice sings during the horny, slow-building "Split Me Open"? "I'm worried I want you with the power of a thousand suns burning as one."

[senorboombastic]

Listening Post – April 2024

Words: Andy Hughes I can’t quite Adam-and-beliEve-it that we’re already easing into spring. No, this isn’t an April Fools (particularly as that was a few days ago), but rather the year zooming ahead as per.  Alongside our bumper playlist for the year (cataloguing everything we’ve been loving from January through to now), the ‘Listening Post’ returns this month and it’s full of choice cuts, 20…

[tuuneoftheday]

Rosali - Bite Down

[frownyalfred]

“Scream if you have to,” is such a terrifying phrase to hear from Bruce. But I think the Batkids actually need to hear it — whether they’re getting a bad break reset, or having a wound cauterized, or something else extremely painful — it can be a relief to know you’re allowed to yell and make noise. Relieving to know that Bruce says it’s okay to scream.

[lazylittledragon]

and what if they got married. what then

[shushmal]

Steve bites back a sigh when he sees a hand waving just out of the corner of his eye, trying to grab his attention from where Steve's gazing pitifully at his drink. The club is loud, music blasting, and maybe it's a little pathetic for Steve to be at his place of work on his day off, but Robin's behind the bar and he gets free drinks. Unfortunately, the kind of guys who frequent his workplace are usually the opposite of Steve's type.

So, he's prepared, for when he looks up, to gently let down whatever club boy who's decided to shoot their shot with him tonight. They all start to look the same to him: bleached hair, glitter, crop tops and low riding pants. Men who are too much like Steve to be what Steve's looking for.

When he looks up, however, his eyes go a little wide and his lips part from around the straw against his tongue.

"Hi!" yells the guy, long hair, long legs, long fingers. He's wearing way too much leather and denim for this place, and he must be boiling under that jacket. "W-would you like to dance?"

Steve takes a longer moment to take him in: his shoulders hunched up around his ears, fingers twisting his hair nervously, eyes big and brown and beautiful.

Straightening from where he's been hiding against the wall, Steve steps up into the guy's space, watches his eyes go bigger and his face go pink. He's perfect.

"I'm Steve," he says, leaning in so he can be heard over the music. "And you don't look like the kind of guy who dances."

"Oh, I'm not," the guy says, eyes flicking around Steve's face, dropping to Steve's chest, to his thighs and back up again. "Um, sorry. I'm Eddie."

Steve grins. "Nice to meet you, Eddie."

Eddie's mouth quirks up, an giddy, boyish smile. "P-pleasure's mine," he says. "And I may be terrible at it, but I'd love to dance with you. If you'd like."

"I would like," Steve tells him. He holds out his hand, feels his heart flutter when Eddie takes it. "I'd like that very much."

[awkwardalex]

BITE DOWN

daily fave ryan 🩶

[hawnks]

You're jealous. It makes you lash out, makes you meet Keigo with claws and teeth and cruel, irrational accusations.

You pack a bag after your last big blow up, shame dogging your every move. A week. Maybe a little more. However long it takes you to stop feeling like a monster, to rein in these dark impulses that have taken hold of you.

He stops you at the door with a firm grip around your arm. Looming over you, leaning down until he's in your space.

"Why?"

How can you even respond. Why? Isn't he angry with you? Doesn't he see how unreasonable you're being?

You tell him the truth. "I'm embarrassed, Keigo."

His hold on you tightens. "So you're running away?"

"I'm not--" You let out a long breath. "I just need to calm down. Get a hold of myself."

"You can do that here. At home."

You tug. He doesn't release you.

"I don't want you to see me like this."

His expression turns stormy.

"You want to keep secrets from me?" You can't even question this before he's continuing, eyes amber bright and sharp as he pulls you further into his space. "You don't want me to see you what --jealous? Don't I have a right to know? Don't I deserve to be with you for this? We're lovers, and you still want to hide pieces of yourself from me?"

Trembling, you let yourself be drawn back into the penthouse. You couldn't fight him even if you tried.

He sets you on the bed, so he can push you down, curl up on top of you, all around you. Caging you in.

"There," he says. "You're not going anywhere. Would it help if I told you about all the times I wanted to kill anyone who touches you? How about how I want to lock you up, forever and ever? I can show you the collar I picked out, if that would make you feel better." He leans up so he can nibble your ear, whisper, "Or you could put it on me, if you want."