You’re probably familiar with the work of North Carolina singer-songwriter Rosali Middleman for her work under her first name. Most recent album, the excellent No Medium released via SPINSTER in 2021, was a deeply personal collection of what we called “raw folk rock ballads that display a triumphant vulnerability.”
Later this summer Middleman returns with a new record, this time under the moniker Edsel Axle. Titled Variable Happiness, the album will be released by Worried Songs and proves something of a change of pace. Forgoing vocals in favour of wandering, cosmic-minded instrumental compositions, Edsel Axle is an outlet for solo guitar work, recorded at home straight to a four-track cassette rig. “[Middleman’s] voice takes a winter hibernation,” as the label put it, “to showcase the prodigious slow burn thump of her solo electric guitar playing.”
You can now listen to the title track and lead single to hear this in action, a warm and patient slice of meditative Americana which bubbles forth from a deceptively simple cyclical guitar line, trembling with psychedelic energy as it unfurls like the scented smoke from an incense stick. It’s proof that lyrics are not required to conjure tangible, lingering feelings, that sometimes music can strike right at the heart of things we otherwise find difficult to describe.