How Many Times

New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Esther Rose introduced her dreamy, twang-suffused retro-country sound and plain-spoken, often endurance-themed lyrics as a five-piece acoustic combo on 2017's This Time Last Night. Two years later, she returned with like-minded songs and a new bassist on You Made It This Far. Her third album, How Many Times, finds her working with an outside producer for the first time, namely Ross Farbe of NOLA synth pop outfit Video Age. Without making any jarring adjustments to her winsome, down-home approach, How Many Times slightly polishes production and expands arrangements, most notably adding electric guitarist Max Bien Kahn to her core band (fiddler Lyle Werner, lap steel guitarist Matt Bell, upright bassist Dan Cutler, and drummer Cameron Snyder). The musicians and Rose's songcraft are both in top form of a set of spunky, heartbroken earworms, beginning with a title track that was written during a sober night of facing truths -- in this case, her relations