Esthero

Wikked Lil’ Grrrls is the first full release from Esthero since the 1998 trip-hop crossover Breath from Another. In the time between, Esthero has gone from a duo to a solo act: The woman (née Jen-Bea Englishman) now exclusively associated with the name has parted ways with Doc, the noted beat technician who produced Breath and originally made up the duo’s other half. Doc’s near-constant stutter-stepping drums caused the album to suffer from that most common of late-’90s maladies: track-to-track jungle homogeneity. On the other hand, Esthero’s pleasant new release, on which she exec-produces, overcorrects with its mixed-bag approach.

You might remember Esthero as the “O.G. Bitch” of last year’s dance club scene. But she’s best known for Breath, which, despite its problems, helped pioneer the current penthouse cocktail groove: lush and complicit, sexual and intelligent. Dido developed it, and by now Frou Frou has damn near perfected it. Still, the landscape has changed since 1998. The sexy mix of jazz, samba, techno and vaudeville that makes Esthero unique remains, but Breath‘s textured smoothness has here been sacrificed for more unfocused, varied styles; to wit: Two angry pop confections, “We R in Need of a Musical Revolution” and the title track, are great fun but jut out a little too prominently among the album’s tuneful but mostly meandering songs.

The rest of the album’s sensibility lies somewhere between those of Sade and Blu Cantrell: unexplored territory, and boring in its unchallenging beauty. Which brings up another problem. The pure enjoyment to be had here is encouraging, but after a seven-year album gap, there’s also disappointment. Esthero should be well in advance of the crowd, not tidying up after it.