Country pop singer, Esther Rose, backed by the band Silver Synthetic and co-produced by longtime producer Ross Farbe, deals with life’s entanglements (sexist men, climate change, a reckless past, and the spider web of love) on her latest album, Safe to Run, which just came out on New West Records. But she does it with a humor and light heartedness, and her sun-soaked pop-country voice, so that things never get too heavy.

“Well I’m okay baby / If you’re alright // Stay if you want to,” she starts on the album opener, “Stay,” a song that straddles her country roots and her newer pop sensibilities. Recorded partly in her home town of New Orleans and Santa Fe, New Mexico, the songs all have a bright, sun-shiney feel, something like “diet Sheryl Crow.” Her voice and her witty story telling steal the show. “Welcome to the end of the rope / Well you know, rock bottom shouldn’t feel this good.”

She is joined by Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra on the title track, which deals with being surrounded by the good and the bad of life, the “angels” and the “wildfires.” She is a genius at balancing the heavy and the light in her songs. And the eleven track, forty minute album, is filled with one compelling story after another, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes getting into the mindset of other people.

It’s a pretty dark record, really, but it’s wrapped in flowers and wind and sunshine. “Here I am again / Clouds are low / Curl of smoke and I’m singing all alone / What if the clouds break open?” Like clouds, there is something airy to the record; and like clouds there is something to be said about life’s more oppressive realities. It’s a sweet and sour album, that goes down smooth. A supremely replay-able record, that isn’t too country and isn’t too pop.

Order Safe To Run by Esther Rose HERE