Esther Rose Expands Americana on "Want"

Esther Rose, by Char Klein

In the first lines of “Want,” the title track from Esther Rose’s new album, she sings, “I want to live in the desert and bake in the sun / I want to live in the city and kiss everyone.” These desires and the others she catalogues in the song seem so simple and natural the way she sings them, particularly when backed only by her own gently strummed acoustic guitar. It sounds like she’s thinking out loud to herself, trying out the ideas and chords at the same time. 

The song and album mark a very different approach to Americana and particularly country music. “Country music is my home,” Rose said in a recent interview. “It set me free, discovering that Hank Williams only played two chords and sounded like that. Okay, I can do this,” she thought. 

That classic vision of country defined her debut album, 2017’s This Time Last Night. “Wanton Way of Loving” signaled her roots clearly with the lap steel guitar, fiddle, acoustic guitar backing her folksy account of the impact of loving before she thinks. The presentation and sound of the song make it seem like the product of a dusty yesteryear, though the sentiments could be contemporary. That’s not the case for Want. Rose loves country music, but “I tend to wander,” she admits. The album sounds contemporary and personal, two things that self-consciously old-time Americana doesn’t. Americana evokes history and tradition, which separates it from the ephemera of modern pop and rock. That can sound like a way to avoid the 21st century and the challenge of making meaningful music in it, but that’s not the case for Esther Rose. On Want, it’s a case of form following function. 

Esther Rose will play Siberia on Wednesday. 

Esther Rose moved to New Orleans from Michigan and lived here for 10 years, performing on Frenchmen Street, St. Claude and the Bywater. She toured and released three albums while in New Orleans, but she moved to Santa Fe during the pandemic. 

“When cities stopped functioning, I made the move,” Rose said in an interview. She had already started hanging out in New Mexico and felt inspired by it, and it helped that she found a new love there. When it became clear that she couldn’t remain emotionally invested in both cities, she chose Santa Fe.

That choice was harder than it might sound. New Orleans has always been a tough nut for indie artists who don’t play funk, jazz, or some combination of the two, and it can be unforgiving for solo artists. Despite all that, “New Orleans is still the most profound music community that I’ve ever been a part of,” Rose said. 

“It’s the place I go when I want to be inspired,” and it’s the place she went to find musicians to record the songs on Want. Members of The Deslondes and Video Age back her up on songs, and she collaborated extensively with producer Ross Farbe of Video Age and Kunal Prakash from Silver Synthetic. 

“I picked folks that I feel super comfortable with who have the best vibes,” Rose said.

That was important because 2023’s Safe to Run tour ended with what Rose calls a “mental health crisis,” and she debated whether she wanted to make music anymore. Rose was drinking too much, so she quit, and she went into therapy. That process proved so formative for her new songs that she considered calling the album The Therapy LP. The title track emerged from insights she gained from therapy, but the more she thought about it, the surer she was that her working title was wrong. 

“I realized therapy is the conduit to the insight, but it’s really coming from me,” Rose said. The therapy helped her focus on some hard issues, but the songwriting itself followed the usual pattern. “I use songwriting as a way to examine and solidify a feeling. What is this feeling? How do I figure it out?”

Before Elon Musk made Ketamine a late night talk show joke, Rose used it as part of a therapeutic program, then wrote about the experience. “I'll try ketamine / I’ll try benzodiazepine / I'll try therapy / And I'll do a deep clean,” she sings to start “Ketamine.” Like “Want,” the song starts with Rose’s voice unadorned and accompanied by only her gentle guitar. Before the verse finishes though, drums pound and introduce a heavily distorted guitar that’s not very Americana. 

“The lead guitar player is the devil on my shoulder and the pedal steel is the angel,” Rose said. “I need both to make my sound.” While talking about the songs, she and Prakash started talking about Smashing Pumpkins and big guitar sounds. That impulse powered up “Ketamine” and “New Bad,” which has a genuinely Smashing Pumpkins instrumental break. 

Want is varied, though. Rose recorded “tailspin” with Video Age, and the spare sound and brittle guitars bring Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville to mind.

“Indie rock set this album free,” Rose said. 

Americana still works its magic on Want, though. It creates the sense that a song’s subject matter has been around forever, and the through line from Want to classic country is clear. Country music in its heyday was domestic music, songs about how people lived at home with the people around them. At its core, Want presents Rose trying to be better at living with herself, her love, and the people around her.

The details of her sound and songs may change, but country is still the musical place where she’s most comfortable. She knows she can write that kind of song, and it’s what she has listened to since the ‘90s.  “When I heard ‘My Favorite Mistake’ by Sheryl Crow as an adult, I was blown away by how perfect that song is,” Rose said. “Country music allowed me to tell my stories.”

Esther Rose has a good, insightful Substack that opens up Want and the musician’s life.