Review: Self Esteem brings razor-sharp pop theatre to Birmingham

There was a moment during a song called John Elton when the brilliance of all this became clear.

It had already been an astonishing show, by any standards: mesmerising choreography, devastating power, immense compassion. But here was Rebecca Lucy Taylor alone, on a stage, with a guitar, lit simply and crisply, singing. It was as compelling and, in its own way, as theatrical as anything that had gone before.

The message was this: these songs don’t need the dancers and the costumes and the elaborate routines. This isn’t a case of an excess of style compensating for a lack of substance. The staging is not there to compensate for their flaws, but to do justice to their glories. They deserve no less.

Taylor, who records and performs as Self Esteem, is one of the more remarkable British artists to have emerged in recent years. She endured the worst tendencies of the indie fraternity when she was a member of the duo Slow Club, who lasted for 11 years before splitting in 2017. She has suffered at the hands of men. There have been efforts to subdue and control and quiet and shrink her. Self Esteem is the explosive response.

The set drew mostly from her second and most recent album, Prioritise Pleasure, which topped various end-of-year polls in 2021. It is pop at its most inventive and ambitious, blending wit and laceration and consolation, one titanium-clad banger after another. They sound huge on record and are given fitting treatment here by Taylor, her three singing dancers and her bassist and her drummer. The result is razor-sharp pop theatre, without a hint of pretentiousness or contrivance. And it’s contoured exquisitely, beginning with singalong anthems, shifting into red-lit confrontational fury and resolving into tenderness and celebration.

What makes it so powerful is its refusal to flinch from horror. This isn't easy, empty feelgood pop - it is bruised and sometimes bruising, and emerges triumphant. It is life-affirming in the most vivid sense, because it is acquainted too well with the enemies of life. This is trauma transfigured.

It is also fun, self effacing and joyful. Self Esteem harnesses the emancipatory power of pop like no one else. Prioritise seeing her.

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