Self Esteem
A Complicated Woman
★★★
POLYDOR
“I am not your therapist/You don’t pay me enough for this,” Rebecca Lucy Taylor reprimands a lover over the snaky Underworld beats of Mother. It’s one of many sharp lines mining her follow-up to 2021 breakthrough Prioritise Pleasure, but there’s still something of the counsellor’s couch about these songs, a record that trembles between acute self-awareness, self-laceration and self-preservation in its quest for “the deep blue OK”.
The choral swell that bolsters these songs to represent community and defiance can become cloying, but Taylor’s emotional Stanley knife still cuts through, especially on The Curse (“I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t fucking work/But it really works/And that’s the curse”) or the electroclash aggro of Lies, featuring Nadine Shah. Meanwhile, both Jarvis Cocker and Neil Tennant might respect filthy dancefloor list-song 69, a necessary Will Powers tone-shift after all the affirmation and reflection.
A Complicated Woman is out April 25 on Polydor.
ORDER: Rough Trade | HMV
Tracklisting:
I Do And I Don’t Care
Focus Is Power
Mother
The Curse
Logic, Bitch!
Cheers To Me
If Not Now, It’s Soon
In Plain Sight
Lies
69
What Now
The Deep Blue Okay
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Photo: Scarlett Carlos Clarke