Athereal Rose talks about her life and her music, especially her debut solo album (Athereal Rose Music) and her upcoming show at Palmers on May 22, 2021.
Athereal Rose is generous with her stories and her music. Both are living testaments to resiliency and often are recipes for becoming resilient. She comes from a difficult homelife where the idea of music or modeling as a career were not accepted or encouraged. But she did have music, even if that did come through the lens of a restrictive church choir with an unaccepting step mother playing piano. At age 16, she moved from that home in Alaska to maternal family members in the Twin Cities, where luckily her aunt worked with choirs. So the music continued.
Music has been at the center for most of Athereal Rose’s life. She moved away from it for a short time and felt like not singing was a slow death. She found a way (Craigslist) to make music part of her life again. She plays with a number of bands in town including Black Widows and The Von Tramps. In March 2021, she released her first album.
Her music crosses over many genres. From the pop TRUTH & Beauty, dance beat at Get UP, rap and hints of ambient electronica in Str8Edge Life. Her voice is power, clear and beautiful. Athereal Rose is visually striking but stronger than her voice or her look is her strength, resilience and shine. Her music, while often sad, contains lessons. Last Sad Song is a song about her last brutal break up. The honesty of singing about “being so fucking lonely” is heartbreaking and real. But as she says, once you can accept you can allow change.
St8Edge Life is a song about her last night drinking. (She will celebrate 7 years of sobriety on July 11.) The song came to her in a dream, as many songs do for her, at a time when she was trying to inspire a friend to consider her sobriety. It’s that generosity of honest stories that lend an authenticity to Athereal Rose’s music. While we can use lessons at any age, I think young people specially will be drawn to the album.
Mostly Minnesota 