Some conversations change how you hear an album
I met Esther Rose a few minutes after she stepped off the stage at Green River Festival. The field was still buzzing from her set. People had been talking about it long before she walked onstage. More than one person had pointed me in her direction earlier in the day with some version of the same message: “Make sure you catch Esther Rose.”
After watching the set, it was easy to understand why.
What struck me wasn’t just the music. It was how much fun everyone seemed to be having. The audience was locked in. Her band looked like they genuinely enjoyed playing together. There was an energy moving back and forth between the stage and the crowd that felt bigger than a typical festival performance.
Rose noticed it too.
“The energy was through the roof,” she told me afterward. “All the way to the back row, everyone was totally engaged.”
For an artist whose latest album, Want, spends so much time examining thoughts, impulses and the complicated workings of the human mind, what stayed with me most wasn’t a grand statement. It was how naturally she talked about enjoying the show itself. She sounded exactly like she had looked onstage: someone genuinely having fun making music.
As our conversation continued, I realized that idea kept resurfacing. When I asked whether she still surprises herself, her answer came quickly.
“I know who I am now,” she said. “I know what I need to work on.”
More than confidence, it sounded like relief.
Listening back to Want after that conversation, I heard the record differently. The questions are still there, but they sounded less like someone searching for answers than someone trying to understand herself a little better.
“This album in particular feels pretty much like being in my brain,” she said. “You’re bouncing around, going down, discovering all the neural pathways. It’s all about behavior, addiction, impulse, why do I reach for this?”
It’s a striking description of a record that often feels like listening in on someone thinking out loud, following each question wherever it leads.
It was also one of those moments where the conversation made me realize I’d been listening to the record with the wrong set of ears.
At the same time, Rose suggested that Want may have marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
“Now I’m zooming back,” she said. “I’m abstracting.”
After spending years turning inward, she seems increasingly interested in how that self-understanding translates into everyday life.
One of the most revealing moments in our conversation had nothing to do with songwriting at all.
Rose told me that before taking the stage at Green River, she felt anxious. Nervous. The same feelings most people have before stepping into an important moment.
The difference was what happened next.
“I really want to enjoy this moment,” she remembered thinking.
So she stopped.
She took a few minutes to ground herself before walking onstage.
It wasn’t some elaborate ritual. She estimated it took about three minutes.
The result was that she was able to actually experience the performance rather than letting it rush past her.
That idea fascinated her far more than the anxiety itself.
“When I feel like I’m achieving that onstage and I’m really not going anywhere in my mind, that’s like heaven.”
Anyone who has ever spent a day trapped inside their own thoughts can understand what she’s talking about. The challenge isn’t necessarily overcoming fear. It’s about being present long enough to experience what is happening.
Rose returned to that theme repeatedly.
She talked about reaching for her guitar when emotions run high. For years, music was how she processed and expressed those feelings. More recently, she has been trying to carry that same openness into conversations away from the stage.
Eventually our discussion arrived at what may have been the central idea behind everything she was describing.
“Basically, I am searching for ways to become more present in my reality and therefore have more connection with other people.”
She was describing something she works on constantly.
“It’s not even relating to music. It’s just being a person in a body. It’s what I work on all the time. All day long I could just reach for my phone and tune out, or I could sit there in the van and breathe and look around and notice what is happening, listen to the sounds.”
What she seems interested in now is not escaping those realities but recognizing them as they happen.
Whenever she succeeds, she said, “beautiful things happen.”
“Scary things,” too.
She laughed at that part.
“That’s sometimes part of the fun.”
That willingness to step into uncertainty also seems to fuel her creative life. When I asked what excites her most about making music today, she didn’t mention streaming numbers or career milestones.
“Right now I’m working with a new producer, and it’s a new relationship,” she said. “I think the exciting part is developing trust. I like to go a little out of my comfort zone every time.”
Looking back across her catalog, she sees each album as another step in that process.
“With my catalog, with my discography, if you start at the beginning and end with Want and don’t listen to everything in between, they might sound kind of different. But if you listen in order, there’s a sonic journey. Every time I made an album, I tried a little bit more experimentation or pushed the instruments in a different direction.”
“That’s why I like making music. I feel like it takes me to an edge, and then I try to step over that edge.”
When I asked whether that progression had been intentional, she didn’t hesitate.
“Every time I go to make another album, I find a new edge.”
It’s a fitting way to describe both her music and the person behind it.
After years of songwriting, self-examination, and artistic evolution, Esther Rose doesn’t sound like someone searching for a completely new version of herself.
She sounds like someone trying to be fully present for the life she already has.
Judging by the smile on her face after walking off the Green River stage, she’s well on her way.
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