I had a long list of questions for New Haven music icon Rosalíe Sunday afternoon as I called her to chat about her new single“Radiohead,” a musical feat inspired by a previous relationship. But mostly, I just wanted to know how she’s been. The indie alt-rock singer moved to Brooklyn a
t the beginning of February, and has re-introduced herself to the neighborhood where she grew up while still traveling back and forth to Connecticut.So how is life these days? “Groundbreaking, heartbreaking, and beautiful,” Rosalíe said. “I’m trying to discover the self I’m growing into.” In other words, as she reflected later in our conversation, “it’s been tempestuous as fuck.”“Radiohead,” which Rosalíe released on April 4, marks a turn toward multi-layered creation, a satisfying simmer of an introduction to the soundscape of Rosalíe’s upcoming album To All the Dead Flowers, which the artist hopes to release mid-summer of this year. Though the new track is, in her words, “not lyrically the most dense,” it was a “labor of love” to create and recreate. Its whispered final words — “Tell me what you want/ Tell me what you need” — are an on-the-spot live performance idea that made its way back onto the official track.The track starts with a simple, tinkling percussive introduction before enveloping the audio space with fast breakbeats, melodic guitar, and Rosalíe’s classic breathy vocals telling a story of love and heartbreak.“‘Cause there we were/ in your car/ blasting Radiohead/ at the start/ said that you loved me,” she sings, creating a split image of carefree lovers on a drive contrasted with Rosalíe’s cool, determined voice telling us about it after the fact.“I like listening to things that feel unexpected,” Rosalíe said, and it shows. Right where you think “Radiohead” will fall cleanly into a repetition of something that came before, it takes a detour into another progression. The middle of the song is a long, expansive build-up, cutting the vocals and stripping the instrumentals to bare bones before building them back one by one.Part of the recipe behind Rosalíe’s new sound is the incorporation of live instruments. When she first started making and releasing music, Rosalíe worked with digital instruments. It was what she had available. The live guitar and drums in “Radiohead,” Rosalíe said, have allowed her to “change the texture” of the track, giving her new ways to look at and rework the music before settling on its final version. “Making music,” she continued, “is a conversation between you and the other musicians in the room — and the music itself.”Rosalíe said that the song was inspired by a previous relationship, but that throughout her songwriting process she felt disconnected from the feelings she had back then. She wanted the song’s gradual buildup to match that tension. It’s like holding your breath, she said — and depicts the feeling perfectly.“I’ve never taken seven months” to write a song, Rosalíe told me. She started writing “Radiohead” in September of last year, rewriting sections and changing the structure while keeping the parts that stayed stuck in her head, that felt good to flesh out. “So much of it was informed by seasonal changes,” she said, keeping it a mystery as to whether she meant the transition from fall to winter to spring or the seasons of life.By the time Rosalíe brings back the vocals with “Tell me what you want/ Tell me what you need” to close out the song, everything feels lightheaded, dizzy, and surreal.Rosalíe told me her album is coming together as she finds herself in a “constant state of release,” with things dying all around her. Lucky for her fans in New Haven, Brooklyn, and beyond, Rosalíe’s release comes in the form of cinematic storytelling and experimental forms that set the stage for her next era of art. ...read more read less
