Above: Elle Barbara.
Elle Barbara is an underground superstar, community organizer, and unapologetic transsexual.
Word on the Street [CLR021/PRNL061/KLP306] is a genre-defying concept album that promises to become a cult classic and solidify Elle Barbara's reputation as an uncompromising auteur, champion of queer eccentricity, all-around visionary, and working-class heroine. Word on the Street is due June 27, 2025. One may PRE-ORDER Word on the Street now from The K Mail Order Dept. All PRE-ORDERS ship by June 9.
Each track on Word on the Street (besides being highly melodic), conjures up unique pictures composed of seemingly incongruous images such as corrupt justice systems, aliens, industrial food production, religious fanaticism, and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Word on the Street is a mixed bag whose conspiratorial aesthetic belies an anti-consumerism stance, and encouraging resistance against the advent of AI and other tools of technological oppression.
Word on the Street is the American debut album by Canadian avant-pop singer-songwriter and performance artist Elle Barbara, and is credited to Elle Barbara's Black Space - a lineup of Montreal-based instrumentalists Barbara summoned to be in conversation with other Black musicians while not playing to expectations of what Black musicians are supposed to sound like. Word on Street was written, composed, arranged, and produced by Elle Barbara, in close collaboration with Renny Wilson, who recorded, engineered, and mixed the album over a challenging 8-year arc that saw Elle, a Black trans person, transition socially and medically while on welfare and frequently eating off as little as $11 CAD per week. In that sense, Word on the Street is a victory against class struggle and nepotism, and is a brazen testament to how a low-income, welfare-assisted, middle-aged, Black male-to-female transsexual beat the odds, using all resources to make the music of her mind while ignoring music industry conventions. Word on the Street is also vehemently radical and independent; a feat of prog-indebted DIY high production, inspired by the ways in which consumerist attitudes and current technology cause our lives to deteriorate, and to feel increasingly alienated from one another
A ceremonial performance for the release will occur at The Church of the Holy Redeemer (3530, rue Adam, Montréal, QC, H1W 1Y7) from May 28-31, 2025. With elements of sound, theatre, and dance, the show, entitled AUTOGYNEGAMY, will see Elle marry herself, in an act of performative sologamy. Advance copies of the Word on the Street LP will be available for purchase at the show.
The first Elle Barbara single from Word on the Street is "Hitler, Stalin & Associates, LLC." View the official music video HERE. This release continues the rich tradition of DIY bands crafting instant pop hits entirely on their own terms, which has long been the hallmark of the International Pop Underground.
Elle Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter, multidisciplinary artist and performer, whose musical output alternately combines elements of soul, sophisti-pop, psychedelia, glam, and underground. A lover of the odd, dark, or overlooked elements in popular music, Elle Barbara rose from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s and has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim - in a career whose highlights encompass duets with Sean Nicholas Savage, Laetita Sadier, and R. Stevie Moore. In recent years, Barbara's efforts mainly centered around TGLBQ+ community organizing, including Taking What We Need (a grassroots group whose mission is to grant discretionary funds to low income trans women) and Montreal's nascent ballroom scene - as Mother of the House of Barbara, whose afrocentric and transdisciplinary practice involves art and activism. Elle Barbara's Black Space on the other hand, is a musical formation that boasts excellence in the likes of Markus Lake and Mitch Holtby, and works to defy black stereotypes, ever present in numerous spaces.