Elle Barbara’s Black Space, Word on the Street 

From making a cameo in Madonna’s recent Montreal show to staging a lavish wedding to herself, Elle Barbara is an aficionado of spectacle. She brings this maximalist approach to her latest record under Elle Barbara’s Black Space, a concept album that’s as likely to foreground weighty themes of religion, politics and apocalypse as it is to touch on everyday topics, like a delicious side of mac and cheese. Backed by Montreal musicians who are notable artists in their own right, including experimental composer Markus Floats and violinist Ari Swan, Barbara has created a multifarious epic that changes styles between, and even within, songs. The track “Justice Complice,” for example, starts as a lovely, almost jazzy ballad, builds to a hooky glam-rock chorus, then suddenly shifts to a banging electro-pop beat before retracing its steps. 

Barbara has asserted that ...