By Ian Bremner

Esther Rose is always changing. For years now, to borrow her phrasing, she’s been spinning a pretty web of songs from wherever she finds herself at the time. Technically based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she’s paid her dues in the streets of New Orleans and juke joints across the country and her sound reflects the miles she’s covered. Her songs play equally well around a backyard fire or dive bar as they do to the increasingly busy venues she now finds herself in backing the excellent new record Safe To Run.

Rose has the ability to drop some of the heavier truths lightly, like the title track Safe To Run. A mellow strummer of a tune with a crushing build, Rose called on fellow New Orleans mainstay Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff to lend softly paired vocals, for one of the albums true highlights. Let the angels find me / I don’t care / If the whisky drowns me / in the poisoned air / fire surrounds me / from here to there / the waters rising everywhere.

Where Rose has a song about Sex & Magic, dismissing both thoughts on a previous album, she continues to show new sides of herself. Releasing any song has to be an incredibly vulnerable feeling, but putting it all out there like she does in Insecure is a massively strong step. Worrying about other women, seeing ghosts of relationships past at the grocery store and apologizing for all of it feels especially gutting as it does understanding for anyone with a human heart.

Safe to Run is Esther Rose’s 4th record and perhaps her best. She’s the type of artist who will always have stories to tell and songs to sing. It’s an encouraging feeling knowing more and more folks will continue to hear them.

Listen/Buy to Safe To Run. Out now on New West Records