Criminally underrated is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Usually, it comes out when discussing various artists.   It always made me wonder what makes something underrated. When I think of the term, I have a ton of records flood into my mind and to me, they were all underrated/underappreciated in different ways.  So I am going to take a moment to start a series, of artists or albums I find to be underrated.  I am not sure how long this series will go, but I am sure its going to take me some time.

So with that, I’ll start with Esthero, who made one of my all-time favorite records in “Breath from Another“. At a time when everyone was trying to convince each other that they were into Portishead and Sade before it was cool, Esthero put out this record with little fanfare and hardly any push from her label. I am not entirely sure how I came across the album. I think she had a song on a mix CD of new artists that were being handed out at Tower Records for free. I remember cycling through the songs and stopping on her song “Heaven Sent”. It was a trip, this eerie haunting songstress vocals, with dub-beats. I wasn’t terribly into this type of music at the point in my life, but it came crashing down on me like a burst of light.  Here I am, nearly 20 years later still listening to this record and it hasn’t lost any of vibrancy or authenticity that made it stand out, all those years ago.