Already being heralded as the UK’s own personal mix of pop sensations Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, and Robyn, it’s fair to say that the Rotherham-born Rebecca Lucy Taylor – better known as Self Esteem – is doing pretty well for herself. At Manchester’s Albert Hall, she not only asserts this observation, but passionately – and creatively – celebrates it with her enamoured audience.
Like all great pop-provocateurs, Self Esteem’s performance style is suitably outrageous, head-spinning, and physically immediate. It’s quickly established that the I Tour This all the Time tour is a theatrical, intimate take on the pop performance, owing to many greats that have come before her – whether it be the cocaine-fuelled, Shakespearean strutting of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour, or the cartoonish, art-school ridiculousness of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense tour (captured in Jonathan Demme’s seminal concert film of the same name).
With frequent costume changes, a marble-like staircase and a splendour of colour-soaked lighting to compliment her melodic talent, Self Esteem live is a feast for the eyes. Her show is dynamic in its aesthetic, its movement and even, when Taylor and her tight-knit backup dancers glide up and down their regal staircase, its altitude. The effect is dazzlingly disorientating: art-pop never looked so good, nor felt so right. A live concert film is sorely needed!
Costume changes in particular are always an interesting compliment to the change in sound/mood across a set list, and Self Esteem’s deft garment-swapping is no exception. Taylor begins the show in a stylish grey blazer, black gloves tightly clutching the microphone: sophisticated, icy, minimal.
It is in this muted, serious vain that Taylor begins her manifesto of sexual liberation, ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ – as if to let her audience know that this is no joke; it’s a call to arms (“the time is now to start accepting…”). Taylor then changes into a rouge-red corset and flowing flares, her backup dancers tip-toeing across the stage in skin-tight spandex and balaclavas that wouldn’t look out of place in an erotic shop.
The costume design switches effortlessly from the austere to the seductive, displaying a hyper-sexual aesthetic that Self Esteem makes clear is for her, and for her only (“My freedom… that’s just for me”). Like a scarlet blush, the swarm of red quickly resurfaces beneath the skin, changing to a divine white. It’s as if that through the confident, self-possessed sexuality of the prior costume choices (and explicit songs such as ‘F*cking Wizardry’ or ‘Moody’), Taylor has achieved some higher form of being: she’s prioritised pleasure, and is all the more heavenly for it.
Self Esteem’s set list and costumes work in tandem to create a subtle narrative arc, one from which I’m sure various audience members will take away their own personal meanings and implications.
When it comes to the actual sound of Self Esteem, rest assured, there’s just as much infectious experimentation in her music as there is in her arthouse-esque theatrics. Her latest album, Prioritise Pleasure, is experimental art-pop at its finest, marrying the disparate elements of the trap-beats and sensual vocals you’d likely find in the pop charts with barbed political consciousness, contemporary gender deconstructions, and alien sonic textures (the acid-house synth warble of ‘It’s Been a While’ a particular example of the latter).
A highlight of the set is undoubtedly the disco-tinted ‘You Forever’, featuring an in-the-pocket bass line that’s bound to get sampled to death by bedroom DJ’s across the country. As the looped line “running round in my head all day” rings across the Albert Hall, Self Esteem and her motley crew of dancers/musicians run around the stage, rarely stopping to catch a breath.
The song’s addictive groove – plus its lyrical themes of obsession, manipulation, and cyclical relationships – are perfectly manifested in the adrenaline-fuelled choreography. This is Self Esteem’s triumphant equivalent of Stop Making Sense’s Life During Wartime. David Byrne and Rebecca Lucy Taylor really ought to make their own cardio DVD.
The set comes to a hair-raising culmination in the form of single ‘I Do This all The Time’, a spoken-word piece so engaging and relatable that the crowd shouts along to even the smallest of Taylor’s asides. At once both loving and venomous (“You’re beautiful and I want the best for you / but I also hope you fail without me”), it’s simply, for lack of better words, moving.
Taylor’s awe-inspiring poetry is supported with a lucid trip-hop beat (think Massive Attack’s Blue Lines) and a rain-soaked, melancholy ambience. Looking vaguely like a disheveled Harley Quinn, Taylor’s makeup runs down her face in a moment of complete vulnerability and transparency: the audience is truly and utterly hers.
Rather fitting for the name, Self Esteem makes you feel good about yourself. She leaves you with an emotion always tinged with regrets, frustrations and oppressions, but ultimately one of resounding hope and liberation. So, go forth, bark like a dog and, of course, prioritise pleasure.
You can stream Prioritise Pleasure below:
