Esthero: Wikked Lil' Grrrls : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Toronto's teenage Esthero found herself compared to Bjork and Billie Holiday when her 1998 debut, Breath From Another, dropped at the height of electronica's hype. Seven years later, the singer enlists Sean Lennon, Andre 3000 and other head-turning cohorts for a lyrically feisty and stylistically expanded follow-up. "I'm so sick and tired of the shit on the radio," she proclaims on the confrontational opener, "We R in Need of a Musical Revolution," then embraces slinky R&B, horn-filled Sixties pop, big-band hip-hop, acoustic drum-and-bass and beyond, on an album more concerned with subtle beauty than commercial bombast. Esthero comes on like a twenty-first century flapper amid the clarinets and swing rhythms of the snappy title track, but chills out like Sade on languid love cuts such as "Gone" (featuring Cee-Lo). Esthero's revolution is primarily personal, but it's still encouraging when a boudoir balladeer blossoms into a name-naming shot caller.