Rebecca Lucy Taylor has become one of the most particular personalities of recent times. As soon as no one remembers his passage through the claimable Slow Club: now he is one of the most important feminist voices that British pop has left. As a private joke and in a very reductionist way, we can consider it the “English zahara”, since its second album ‘prioritis pleasure’ contained complaints #metooo and reflections on self -affirmation and mental health, a few months after ‘fucking’ came out. Now, he faces the identical challenge of surviving the media impact of his predecessor.
Self this is clear: “If I simplified and limited me to make pop music music, they were going to put me in the playlists and on the radio, in mainstream television programs,” he says, perhaps referring to his passage through ‘Bake Off’. “But artistically I can’t.” ‘A Complicated Woman’ is a “complicated” album about a “complicated woman”, in honor of her ironic title.
The third length of Self Esteem was rejoiced in its contradictions. The “spoken word” of welcome ‘i do and i don’t care’ confesses to be stagnant in the 15 years because “the passage of time is only measured by the girl you are talking about.” It is a song that recognizes being “coward” and “empowered” at the same time; Be “strong” and be “shattered” at the same time. In that line, the album will be indistinctly powerful and challenging, as in the electronics ‘Mother’, which invites you to read something that is not ‘the guardian between rye’; Already vulnerable, as in the ballad ‘The Curse’, in which Taylor fights against alcohol addiction. “I would not repeat if it didn’t work for me, but it works for me, and that is the curse.”
-The song that best reflects that dichotomy is the single She can approach the Taylor Swift territories (‘Cheers to me’), Coldplay (‘if not now, It’s Soon’), or can even make apocalyptic music to sing that does not want to make a ’69’ (a baggy production and I suppose that deliberately ridiculous). But nothing feels as good as the most timeless British record. The gospel choir and vocal games have enormous prominence -not only in ‘What now’ -, throughout an intentionally strident album, maximalist and chillón. There you have the cover type ‘The tale of the maid’.
The collaborations are as anecdotal as that of the artist Sue Tompkins at the end of ‘Logic, Bitch!’, Or that of the South African Moonchild Sanelly in ‘In Plain Sight’, which arrives to underline a message of equality, to the shout of «What pussy do you want from me? Let me be! That is, they reinforce the self -esteem message. She is the center of everything in a project largely designed for the live that has already been displayed in a theater in London 4 consecutive nights. In fact, Self Esteem has recently participated in a ‘cabaret’ representation in the same city, which also had Jake Shears. Maybe that’s why absolutely everything here is absolutely histrionic.
The album ends in Portishead Plan, with a mixture of Trip Hop and Jazz (The Eb of ‘The Deep Blue Okay’), without giving great answers. Nor in terms of the future sound of Self Esteem, which lists past strategies. In the letter of ‘Mother’ he had precisely raised “I don’t need solutions, just being heard.”
