“Someone New”
Welcome back and welcome home to all music Lovers in the greater Wilmington area. As the heat of summer fights fall’s refreshingly welcome advances, we find ourselves back in our beloved arena of communal discovery to illuminate another set of our community’s finest creatives. Today, we present for your viewing pleasure Lady Die and their debut single from March of this year, “Someone New.”
Review and Exposition
The building of empires is constructed upon the desire for a grand permanence. Kings, tyrants, rulers, and the many differing organizations of humankind build marbled statues and raise ivory towers to the heavens with the belief that theirs will be the first empire to undue History’s legend, to trample on Time’s perfect record. Now, I’ve never raised an obelisk in my name or the name of a lover, but I have spoken to the impossibility of forever, and I’ve seen my empires fall into Time’s abyss the same as all the rest. One of life’s inescapably cruel lessons is seeing love come tumbling to its demise, to willingly raise yourself from the rubble, however naively, and continue building our empires of love. “There is no clear way to enter / The heavy machinery of the heart / Just jagged cutthroat questions / Just the glitter and blood production,” Mindy Nettifee beautifully illustrates the conflicting nature of entering Love’s kingdom in this excerpt from her poem This is the Nonsense of Love, identifying it as a place of necessity in all of our lives but also a place of damning impermanence. Lady Die’s debut single, “Someone New” is a fantastical exploration into the aftermath of heartbreak, traversing the distance between the crippling chill of isolation and the return to a warm, hopeful embrace with some assured future with love, be it for another or of self, embedded within an expansive six-minutes.
“25 weeks of winter, skipping dinner,” is an awfully poetic summary of the depths experienced, of how truly ugly this all can be. The first act of the song builds a somber space rooted under the bitter weight of despair felt in response to the loss of something once held dear. “I wanna be silvery, and beautiful to you / With sapphire in my voice.” Longing, as another prevailing reaction in Grief’s wake, has a certain drowning gravitational pull that is explored in, “Someone New.” Our immediate natural responses laid bare as otherwise helpless attempts at coping. The song may not explicitly offer an explanation of what specific presence of love that was lost, yet the sense of craving for a return, to normalcy and to the comfort of what is known, resonates. “Held your hair back in a braid, silly women, we’re all the same / spill the redness of our hearts, I go too far,” in what may be my favorite moment, the song undergoes it’s point of departure as Julia Rothernberger’s voice distorts to a higher plane with the last words of the line. The worried, bleeding hurt that embodied Julia’s tone, the minor piano strokes, truly the entirety of the first act, are now supplemented with expressly amplified, synth-heavy, electronic movements that seem to tangibly empower Julia’s vocal direction towards relief. This marks a shift to an emancipated understanding of where they can direct themselves towards healing. To a space of new opportunity, to both be with, and become someone new.
The attention paid to production value adds additional layers of radiance that deserve its fair due as well. The sweeping, complex sound design organically melds in beautiful harmony with Rothenberger’s emotionally charged lyricism and vocal apparatus to form a glimmering web that suspends the listener within its ethereal, mosaic grasp. “Someone New” is a story that begins with an ending. Formed on parallel planes of storytelling in both sound and conversation, it travels alongside the road to rediscovery and is a beautifully vulnerable reflection into how we deliver ourselves from, “I want to be with someone just like you” to the decisive realization of “Wanted to be with someone just like you / But there’s someone better for me than you / I’m gonna be with someone new.”
What’s Next
Lady Die is composed of Samuel McNeilly on drums, Logan Strahley on guitar and supporting vocals, Tanner James Lackey on bass and supporting vocals, and lead by Julia Rothernberger. They are just beginning their blossoming tenure as a full band and are playing an ever-growing number of shows around town. As they work on recording and preparing the release of their first full length project, the release of “Someone New, demands, by virtue of its brilliance, our attention into whatever may come next. Follow their future steps by keeping in tune with them on Instagram @__ladydie__
Ben “Danger” Matthews | PCE
Chief Word Person
The Port City Experiment 