ITis early November and Rosali Middleman is standing alone under the flying Mthat tops the stage at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, North Carolina, a modern little Southern city 30 miles from her home in the countryside. In the soft blue and purple stage lights, her slender height is twinned by the tall concert harp that stands by for headliner Mary Lattimore, an old friend from Philadelphia’s teeming music scene.
Though Middleman’s set includes songs from her as-yet-unreleased fourth record, Bite Down, she isn’t trying to dial them in. Instead, using a Loop Station, she blows them out with fluent improvisation. Her shining, stinging Gibson SG tone coils higher and higher; her calm but penetrating alto voice spreads like mentholated smoke. In effect, she is pre-deconstructing her new songs, as far as the audience are concerned, letting her experimental music infiltrate her mainline work in away that she never has until tonight. It is not your typical launch strategy.
But then Middleman has every reason to be confident right now. She has ahigh-profile new record label and aband she’s head over heels for to support her best album so far –atender yet commanding set of folk, country and atmospheric rock done up in blaze orange and shadow blue.