THE PLOT THICKENS

Self Esteem’s third album A Complicated Woman’ adds theatrical touches to literate lyrical snark, says Helen Brown

- Helen Brown

“We’re not chasing happiness any more, girls/ We’re chasing nothing/ The great big still/ The great blue OK… and we’re OK today,” intones Rebecca Lucy Taylor on the opening track of A Complicated Woman. Her third album as Self Esteem is so theatrical she could have titled it Millennial Me: The Musical. Beats seem to bounce from the stark stage surface as narratives are emoted into a headset mic.

Throughout, Taylor is backed by a choir who chant the song’s title “I Do and I Don’t Care”, tongues on teeth, smacking confession and defiance into each consonant like the chorus in a stage musical. You can almost hear the lights dim and sense a spotlight fall on Taylor as her voice arcs upwards in wordless, yearning melody then drops low and steely into her Sheffield accent for a spoken word, scene-setting section of the track, transporting herself back to the age of 15: “Be very careful what you wish for, she said, looking at me all smug… and as yet another person with a doctorate in internet diagnoses me with ADHD, I’m