Esther Rose
Esther Rose will release Want on May 2, 2025 via New West Records. The 11-track set was produced by Ross Farbe (of Video Age) and recorded live-to-tape at the Bomb Shelter in Nashville, TN. Want is the anticipated follow-up to 2023’s Safe to Run, met with wide acclaim from The New York Times, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and more. The album features Dean Johnson, Video Age, and members The Deslondes. Following the wide-open serenity of Safe to Run, Rose now leans toward confrontational arrangements full of distortion and full-band spontaneity, never sacrificing her gift for melody that makes each song instantly memorable. “For me, these songs felt like revelations,” she explains, comparing the record to a memoir, alive with kinetic storytelling and personal insight. Ranging from stark solo performances to grungy blowouts, the album maintains a steady focus while never staying too long in one place. Vivid and bracing, she has made the most adventurous, hardest-hitting record of her career.
Esther Rose
Texas & SE angels: Tour starts FRIDAY with Dean Johnon! TX →LA→AL→GA→NC
These will be stripped-down duo sets with Jeremy accompanying me on acoustic guitar.
Tickets: www.estherrose.net/tour-dates
Dec 5 Austin, TX - 29th St. Ballroom
Dec 6 Dallas, TX - The Kessler Theater
Dec 7 Houston, TX - Heights Theater
Dec 9 New Orleans, LA - Chickie Wah Wah
Dec 10 Birmingham, AL - Woodlawn Theatre
Dec 11 Atlanta, GA - Center Stage Vinyl
Dec 12 Durham, NC - The Pinhook (early show)
Dec 13 Asheville, NC - AyurPrana Listening Room
Dec 14 Charlotte, NC - Neighborhood Theatre
1 week ago | [YT] | 10
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Esther Rose
It’s here! You can listen & order your own copy here:
newwst.com/want
7 months ago | [YT] | 17
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Esther Rose
“Had To” starts with a riddle. I loved drinking, and I used it to cope with everything. I’ve been this way in the past with other drugs that were perhaps more dire to my health (e.g. cocaine), but alcohol was there from the start and outlasted everything else. (When will we have a new phrase for “addictive personality”? Habit aficionado?)
newwst.com/hadto
Drinking is a gift for every season, and drinking is a way to pass the day
Drinking is a sin to some believers, and drinking is a reason to be saved
I know that the only thing haunting me is my relationship with alcohol. I write a couple verses and a chorus and leave the song half-finished.
A few weeks go by, and I am now driving on The Iciest Scary Ass Mountain Pass in Colorado. That feeling when you look in your rearview mirror and everyone behind you is turning around. Dread. We are on our way home from a long tour to Treefort and just want to sleep in our beds. I glide over a sheet of ice for many miles, trying not to look down the sheer cliff canyon walls. I start singing aloud:
I need a big hug
and a back rub
And a pay stub
And a refund
I need a hit tune
Or a breakthrough
Want to see you
In my living room
We finally come down the mountain. I park and take my phone into a state park bathroom so I can record a voice memo. I pace and sing the song, line for line. I am completely wound up. Fight, flight or freeze. I write. My friend Mik says that writing is a form of fighting. It’s an action, a way through, a forward motion. Putting pen to paper (or mumbling into voice memos) is how I process the world within and around me.
Ultimately, I merged the two song fragments together with a key change. The theme of “having too much” worked really well with both drinking and touring. I have quit drinking, but I have not quit touring. But I did give it a good look over. What I found is that my connection to songwriting is the strongest thread inside of me. It’s what makes this whole reality thing make sense. So, I keep doing it, but with a renewed sense of purpose.
8 months ago | [YT] | 28
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Esther Rose
My fifth album, Want, produced by Ross Farbe at The Bomb Shelter, is out on New West Records on May 2nd. You can stream the first single "New Bad" everywhere and watch the music video here:
https://youtu.be/cI9t6MqMyUk?si=5n4eq...
This record is introspective and internal. Away from sunlight, it’s dark inside. Of course, I’ll always be a Sagittarius, eating the road for breakfast and spouting couplets, but in these eleven songs, I examine my thoughts and behavior patterns. Somewhere after “Had To” but before “Ketamine”, I quit drinking alcohol. In a roundabout way, this album is a blow-by-blow account of the transformational experience I had in my personal life. Because the work I do on myself and the art I share with the world is intrinsically linked.
Photo by Anna Marie Tendler
Design by Jackson Tupper
1 Want
2 tailspin (ft. Video Age)
3 Had To
4 Ketamine
5 Rescue You
6 Scars (ft. Dean Johnson)
7 Messenger
8 New Bad
9 The Clown
10 Color Wheel
11 Want Pt. 2
The band: Gina Leslie, John James Tourville, Kunal Prakash & Howe Pearson.
Engineered by Drew Carroll. Mastered by Joe Lambert.
10 months ago | [YT] | 17
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Esther Rose
2025 is coming, and with it, much newness! I'm so excited to go on a solo tour with one of my favorite songwriters, period, Twain. I'll play songs from This Time Last Night and also newer songs I can't wait to share with you.
Tickets are on sale today at 10am local time:
www.estherrose.net/tour-dates
1 year ago | [YT] | 6
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Esther Rose
"Out in the Country" with Video Age is out today!
https://youtu.be/RoUanIgmpnU?si=8m5hB...
1 year ago | [YT] | 5
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Esther Rose
The people have spoken and you are allowed to have This Time Last Night on vinyl, as a treat.
You can pre-order my first album tomorrow, May 3 for Bandcamp Friday.
Originally released in 2017, with new artwork by Jackson Tupper, these are pressed in Athens, Georgia on brick-red vinyl and limited to only 500 copies. The record comes with an inner sleeve photo collage of all my friends and bandmates who helped birth my first album. So excited for you folks to hold this in your hands and listen to it on vinyl!
I'll be playing songs from this record on tour this summer, as well as a whole mess of new songs (did I tell you we're recording a new record next week in Nashville?).
& meeting up with my bros in The Deslondes for a trip through the Rockies that ends at the Western AF Showcase in Laramie, Wyoming. Plus my first-ever London headline show!! See you out there, sweethearts! :)
June 14 Pine Plains, NY @ Stisson House
June 18 Gloucester, MA @ The Cut
June 20 New York, NY @ Knitting Factory Baker Falls
June 22 Burlington, VT @ The June Farm Show
June 23 North Haven, ME @ Crabtree Sessions
June 27 Nashville, TN @ The Basement
June 28 Birmingham, AL @ Avondale Brewing Upstairs
June 29 Monroe, LA @ Strauss Theatre
July 16 Santa Fe, NM @ Railyard Plaza*
July 17 Trinidad, CO @ Trinidad Lounge*
July 18 Denver, CO @ Globe Hall*
July 19 Boulder, CO @ Velvet Elk Lounge*
July 20 Laramie, WY @ The Cowboy Saloon*
Sept 5 London, UK @ The Lexington
estherrosemusic.bandcamp.com/album/this-time-last-…
1 year ago | [YT] | 14
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Esther Rose
Safe to Run (featuring The Deslondes) is out now! https://youtu.be/GH6mMe7F948
This version sounds like a big hug feels. I am so grateful to release this song today with my best buds.
The EP Safe 2 Run (versions) releases Jan 9 ❤️🔥
Recorded at Bigtone Records in New Orleans, LA
Produced & mixed by Ross Farbe
Mastered by Dan Weston
Photo by Shelby Duncan
Artwork by Jackson Tupper
2 years ago | [YT] | 13
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Esther Rose
EAST COAST TOUR this week!
This will be my first time bringing the band to these cities. Get your tickets / tell a friend (: Opening the shows will be my favorite songwriter in the universe, Dean Johnson.
tix ---> bnds.us/hx0c94
7.11 Philadelphia, PA - Milkboy
7.13 Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair
7.14 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom +
7.15 Freehold, NJ - Concerts in the Studio +
7.16 Washington, DC - Union Stage +
+ with Dean Johnson
ICYMI, here's Dean and I performing his song "Old TV" for WesternAF
---> youtu.be/XhIuolb7hTU
2 years ago | [YT] | 8
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Esther Rose
🎀Safe to Run🎀 has been out for a week. How does it feel? What song is your favorite?
Thank you for the love, shares, dms, and other various unknowable ways you’ve shown support. Maybe just thinking a nice thought about a loved one while listening. Thank you to the journalists who gave it a spin and wrote beautifully. I am humbled to receive any press at all. I gather from your feedback that these songs are landing deeply. That is my dream. That’s what I hoped for as Ross (slide 3) and I obsessively worked on these tunes.
It only takes a couple years to write and record an album, but somehow it felt like it took my entire life this time. In a good way!
2 years ago | [YT] | 18
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