Want

With her previous album, the elegant and breezy Safe to Run (2023), Esther Rose completed a string of four albums that explored affection, regret, and heartbreak with a tuneful retro-country that welcomed in fans of pure singer/songwriter fare. After recording that album, Rose considered quitting music, relocated from New Orleans to Santa Fe, quit drinking, and then started getting somewhere with therapy. (The working title for the follow-up was The Therapy LP.) When she decided she wanted to keep making music after all, she called on Ross Farbe, producer of her third and fourth albums, and headed to Nashville for live-to-tape sessions with a set of songs that were more open and confrontational in nature. In line with this new attitude, the resulting Want marks a long glide step away from neo-traditional country and into alternative country-rock. Its a shift thats notable but maybe not as abrupt as it sounds, as Rose retains her gentle twang, lilting melodies, and decorative pedal steel guitar -- at least some of the time. The opener, "Want," for instance, seems to take existing fans by the hand to lead them gradually into sturdier and more alien sounds as the album progresses. With its country bassline and rustic sensibility, that song inventories wants in uncensored fashion in between changing time signatures for more-assertive choruses that repeat the phrase "Living real life." (The word "want" appears 77 times on the album, per the songwriters count.) Its followed by another crossover entry, "tailspin," featuring Farbes band Video Age (but without the synth pop), and later, singer/songwriter Dean Johnson is featured on the memorably poignant and graceful "Scars," another quasi-acoustic outing. Elsewhere, however, she delves headlong into country-rock with catchy songs like the alcohol-themed "Had To" (home of the stellar rhyme "I need a big hug/And a back rub/And a pay stub") and noisier album highlight "New Bad," whose sustained feedback and wall of guitars takes her somewhere new. So, too, does "The Clown," which evokes the sonic atmosphere of Bowies "Heroes" (in its second half), and, perhaps most surprising of all, "Messenger" adopts a dingy acoustic post-punk. The good news is that the songs are strong, and it all works thanks largely to an effortlessness that seems synonymous with Rose, whose warm, empowered storytelling, playfully poetic way with words, and engaging sense of melody command it all. ~ Marcy Donelson