When Esthero released the epochal Breath From Another in 1998, she was barely eighteen years old. A transplant from the Ontario countryside, the singer/songwriter arrived in Toronto as a teen and penned an album that changed the face of electronic music by fusing sharp, poignant vocals with both live and digital instrumentation. What followed was a creative moratorium for Esthero, until 2006 when her follow-up album Wikked Lil’ Grrrls built some buzz thanks to the title track, which landed on Desperate Housewives’ promos as well as various film soundtracks. Enter her latest album, Everything Is Expensive, her most fluid and personal album to date.
Everything Is Expensive is by far Esthero’s most intimate work. “All of my records are personal – I don’t know how to do anything else,” she says. “But this one, after it was finished and I was able to take my producer hat off and listen to it as a finished piece, I was able to grasp what I had just purged. We realized it was disarmingly personal.” Sonically, Everything Is Expensive is primarily unplugged, arriving at a time when electronic music has reached its saturation point. For an artist who perfected that very sound in the ‘90s, the irony is not lost on her.
Esthero
When Esthero released the epochal Breath From Another in 1998, she was barely eighteen years old. A transplant from the Ontario countryside, the singer/songwriter arrived in Toronto as a teen and penned an album that changed the face of electronic music by fusing sharp, poignant vocals with both live and digital instrumentation. What followed was a creative moratorium for Esthero, until 2006 when her follow-up album Wikked Lil’ Grrrls built some buzz thanks to the title track, which landed on Desperate Housewives’ promos as well as various film soundtracks. Enter her latest album, Everything Is Expensive, her most fluid and personal album to date.
Everything Is Expensive is by far Esthero’s most intimate work. “All of my records are personal – I don’t know how to do anything else,” she says. “But this one, after it was finished and I was able to take my producer hat off and listen to it as a finished piece, I was able to grasp what I had just purged. We realized it was disarmingly personal.” Sonically, Everything Is Expensive is primarily unplugged, arriving at a time when electronic music has reached its saturation point. For an artist who perfected that very sound in the ‘90s, the irony is not lost on her.