Esthero's Everything Is Expensive is the proto 2020s sadgirl indie album.

2026-10-13

This isn’t the usual kind of post I put on this blog, and I’ll have some more professional tech-oriented things coming up shortly, but I wanted to share some observations and recommend an album I listened to recently.

I feel like, lately, a very particular kind of female-fronted pop album has been growing in popularity. It usually features diverse yet minimalist pop production, mixing live instruments, synthesizers, and drum machines, while the lyrics tackle subjects such as relationships, mental health, and reflections on the socioeconomic state of the world.

As I was listening to the third studio album by one of my all-time favorite singers, Esthero, it struck me just how sonically and thematically similar the album was to recent releases such as The Great Impersonator by Halsey, The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift, and Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams. The production, genre-bending, and the metaphor-laden, introspective lyrics make it read that way to me. Perhaps that’s an overgeneralization on my end. It’s not rare for a pop album to tackle subject matter like this, nor is it rare for it to shift between genres and production styles.

Still, everything about this release, from the cover art to the pacing of the tracklist, felt very modern and ahead of its time, while still keeping some of Esthero’s unique artistic quirks, such as a penchant for theatrical songs that sound straight out of a musical and some funky vocal processing that at times reminded me of Imogen Heap. A lot of the production and instrumental palette on the softer, slower cuts on this album also echo a little bit of 808s & Heartbreak by Kanye West, which Esthero was featured on as a background vocalist.

I really enjoy the album’s restraint and minimalism. The best example of this is the three-chord ballad “Black Mermaid” near the start of the tracklist. It’s a beautiful testament to the power of love and its ability to mend the souls of broken people, and it crescendoes into some wonderful backing vocal lines and percussion. A lot of the other slow songs follow a similar template: “Everything Is Expensive,” “Crash,” “Over”… They all gracefully blend social commentary and personal emotional struggle over minimalist indie-pop instrumentals that wouldn’t sound out of place on a modern streaming blockbuster.

I also appreciate the really out-of-nowhere rock cut “Supernatural.” It reminds me a lot of songs by Broken Social Scene or Stars, with its on-the-nose emotional lyrics, blown out electric guitar and repetitive chorus.

I’d also like to mention the hyper-theatrical, campy “Walking On Eggshells,” which has some catchy, irreverent vocal delivery and a wonderful arrangement. The same goes for the following track, “Never Gonna Let You Go,” which leans more into the electronic side of the production and almost sounds like a throwaway from her second album, Wikked Lil’ Grrrls.

Overall, good album. Sounds very 2026 and also very 2012 at the same time. Give it a spin on Bandcamp.

Music