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Photo by Matt Keenan

Esther Kohl isn’t afraid of what you think of her. She’s also not afraid to be your monster either, the Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s debut full-length album is out August 6th and it plays like the sound of someone finally done making herself feel bad for what other people think. It’s ten songs of unpolished, larger-than-life production that borrow the heart and soul of a classic Kaiju movie’s destruction. 

Kohl has spent the last year building toward this moment one single at a time, with “Wet Dream” and “Is It Worth It?” picked over the wreckage of a bad hookup with a bluntness that earned her comparisons to L7 and Steve Albini-era Nirvana. The record is raw, unglamorous, and grinning all throughout the mess. Then came the latest single, “Godziller,” which took that same instinct and blew it up to skyscraper destroying proportions. 

This impression of Kohl being seen as “the monster” had come from a false rumor that she’d heard about herself. Someone said she’d broken into some guy's apartment, which wasn’t true, but instead of looking to clear her name she decided that if he wanted a monster, he'd get one. The product of leaning into being this destructive force of nature was a record of distorted power chords and drums that fall like debris from a building Esther had just smashed, and a vocal performance that snaps between deadpan and full-throated release. It’s not a diss track, it’s a monster movie where Kohl plays one on purpose. 

That’s the engine of what you’ll find at the very heart of Winner, an utter refusal to comply with a clean moral that gives the listener any resolve. Once you’ve heard the record, you’ll hear that tone reinforced in all of the record's highest and lowest points too. Esther doesn’t seem interested in being liked so much as she is being accurate, and this record is one of the New York indie scene’s most powerful statements about what a female musician can do in her prime musical prowess. Winner is nostalgic in its bones, but thoroughly hers in execution.  

One of the best things about Winner is also its range, not just in Esther’s vocal performance but her songwriting. The tracklist can switch from a quiet vocal with palm muted power chords to a gritty, explosive instrumentation over infectious lyrical hooks like in the title track “Winner,” when Esther goes from quietly and plainly stating “If I don’t ever see you again, I’m making love to all of your friends” and on the choruses launches explosively into singing “I don’t want to be anyone else”. 

During the single rollout on this debut record, she’s been called “self-aware” and full of “Donita Sparks energy” and has done nothing short of deliver exactly what she set out to do: a debut that doesn’t ask permission to take up the room it’s in. 

Listen to Winner below: