Elle Barbara shares “Operating Thetan: Unknown”

Last month, Elle Barbara, the avant-garde singer-songwriter, recording artist, and performer based in Montreal, Quebec, announced her first album in a decade. Entitled Word On The Streetthe album is due out June 27th on Celluloid Lunch / Perennial / K and Elle’s own House of Barbara.

Rising from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s, Elle Barbara has seen her work soar to enduring acclaim, in a part-time artistic career whose highlights include duets with Lætitia Sadier and Sean Nicholas Savage, a diverse array of performance art pieces, and even a recent performance with Madonna. In the later half of the 2010s, Elle Barbara’s efforts mostly centered around community organizing and solidarity work. She notably helped establish an anti-poverty grassroots collective whose mission was to grant discretionary funds to low-income trans feminine people, and did peer work to promote harm reduction methods and offer active listening and legal support to society’s most vulnerable. She mainly releases music as Elle Barbara’s Black Space, a concept group she formed to feel less culturally isolated in Montreal’s underground. She is also partly responsible for reviving Montreal’s ballroom scene.

Today, Elle is sharing a second single from the album, a track called “Operating Thetan: Unknown.” 

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “OPERATING THETAN: UNKNOWN”

Word on Street was written, composed, arranged, and produced by Elle Barbara, in close collaboration with Renny Wilson, who recorded, engineered, and mixed the album over a challenging 8-year arc that saw Elle transition socially and medically while on welfare and frequently eating off as little as $11 CAD per week. In that sense, Word on the Street is a victory against class struggle and nepotism, and is a brazen testament to how a low-income, welfare-assisted, middle-aged, Black male-to-female transsexual beat the odds, using all resources to make the music of her mind while ignoring music industry conventions. 

The albums is a genre-defying concept album that promises to become a cult classic and solidify Elle Barbara’s reputation as an uncompromising auteur, champion of queer eccentricity, all-around visionary, and working-class heroine.

Each track on the album conjures up unique pictures composed of seemingly incongruous images such as corrupt justice systems, aliens, industrial food production, religious fanaticism, and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. 

“Operating Thetan: Unknown” as is the case throughout the whole Word on the Street, explores the themes of late-stage consumerism, authoritarian rule, and commodity worship, as Elle explains:

“Operating Thetan: Unknown is partly inspired by The House of the Rising Sun as well as my past foray and escape from the Church of Scientology. It is deeply religious in aesthetic, and reflective of our cult-like obsessions and anxieties.”

Elle will perform a release event for her latest record at The Church of the Holy Redeemer (3530, rue Adam, Montréal, QC, H1W 1Y7) from May 28-31, 2025. With elements of sound, theatre, and dance, the show, entitled AUTOGYNEGAMY, will see Elle marry herself, in an act of performative sologamy. Advance copies of the vinyl will be available for purchase at the show.

PRESAVE / PREORDER WORD ON THE STREET

Elle Barbara Links

Instagram | Bandcamp