Elle Barbara

ELLE BARBARA is an underground superstar, community organizer, and unapologetic transsexual.

Word on the Street 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.

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.

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 vinyl will be available for purchase at the show.