Above: Elle Barbara!
Elle Barbara is an underground superstar, community organizer, and unapologetic transsexual.
Word on the Street [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. The new Elle Barbara album Word on the Street is in stores this Friday, June 27!
Each track on Word on the Street, as well as 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. Read more about Elle Barbara's philosophy and working aesthetic HERE.
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.
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. Look for the video from Elle Barbara single "Hitler Satan & Associates LLP".
Above: Elle Barbara, Word on the Street [PRNL061/KLP306] is available now from The K Mail Order Dept. and will be in stores across the globe this Friday, June 27.