Gig Review: Self Esteem At O2 Academy Brixton
A triumphant, tongue-in-cheek spectacle that blurs pop concert, theatre, and confession, Self Esteem’s South London show is a masterclass in turning vulnerability into power.
Introduced by Nadine Shah and Moonchild Snelly (both of whom rejoin the main artist on stage for their features on the album tracks), Self Esteem - the creative project of Rebecca Lucy Taylor - steps onto stage in South London in a nun-like habit, a pretty perfect replica of the costumes worn in the TV adaptation of the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The adulation of the crowd is immediate, crackling.
She opens with I Do and I Don’t Care, centre-stage in a line of similarly-habited troupe of 8 singer-dancers, writhing and jerking like women possessed. It’s like watching a contemporary theatre’s vision of The Crucible, with the O2 Academy Brixton suitably hushed until the opening track hits its key proclamation - “This really is all there is / We’re not chasing happiness anymore girls, we’re chasing nothing”. The roar is genuinely deafening.
After a critically lauded run as Sally Bowles in the West End’s Cabaret, Taylor returned to the studio to produce A Complicated Woman, her third album. The album, and the show, continue in her project to be more than ‘just’ a pop star. Self Esteem has always been a multi-faceted operation, steered at the helm by the unapologetic persona her stage name suggests.
The set and staging is steeped in her lore - there’s a cardboard cut out of an Eddie Redmayne press-shot, captured stepping into a taxi by the paparazzi holding the Prioritise Pleasure vinyl and a Pret coffee - lurking by the stage door. Under the pilgrim's cap, she’s wearing a cropped football jersey with the number 69, referencing her track by the same name during which a screen projects the song’s litany of sexual positions in large red cursive (6. Reverse Cowgirl). Her boppy, radio-friendly hit Cheers to Me turns the stucco-ed venue into something like a cruise ship disco, with multicoloured lighting and car dealership inflatables swaying maniacal fixed grins side to side.
The songs from her previous album that make the set - ‘You Forever’, ‘I’m Fine’, ‘Fucking Wizardry’, are ones which reference her stint as one half of the mediocre indie-pop duo Slow Club in the 2010s, a period Taylor has repeatedly denounced as unfulfilling and limiting. “You need to be braver”, she yells on ‘You Forever’ “cos I did this all without you.” It’s a satisfying meta-narrative about creative control that clearly has her fans hooked.
And tonight, it is difficult not to feel that I’m watching a master at work - the joy with which she embodies the world she’s built is infectious, laughing euphorically in between choreography, kissing the faces of her co-performers, shaking her finger at the sky to punctuate the Lies lyric “no-one’s as bored of this as me” - she looks indomitable as she towers over the pit of photo dudes during the chorus of Mother “I am not your mother, I am not your Mum”. There’s moments I let out a small cackle of glee - this is one of them.
She goes a long way to make sure her crowd knows this is a group project. She introduces her 8 singer-dancers and 2 musicians by name (including her ‘token male’ drummer), some of whom have been with her since the very beginning. The school changing room aesthetic of the set is difficult to parse at first - some slightly thrown-together choreography on a circle of plastic chairs invites GCSE drama comparisons, but once the wooden benches and sports bra / football shirt combos come out, I’m won over by the nostalgia of it. And the near-constant presence of a backing choir - which feels a bit grating on the album - makes more sense live, in a show designed to feel like a group of girl mates singing at each other for the joy of it in the classroom at lunchtime.
There are some moments where it leans a little personality cult-ish, but this is (I think?) just about offset by the times she easily steps out of the spotlight - for Moonchild Sanelly’s powerful verse on ‘In Plain Sight’, Taylor disappears into formation and the shadows with the rest of her dancers, and in one of the few (perhaps too few) quieter, palette-cleansing moments of the show - ‘What Now’ - she is indistinguishable in an inwards-facing huddle of performers.
It feels messier and more playful than her previous tour, which was certainly slicker and a little more reserved. Her performance is, as you might expect, more theatrical - which sometimes fails the bleak source material of her lyricism. ‘The Deep Blue Okay’, a stand-out album track about the relentless drudgery of maintaining sanity, is swallowed by the frenzy. But this doesn’t detract from the fact that Self Esteem is an approach to pop music and performance that feels truly different. ‘The Curse’ is the set at its most moving - she gazes on grinning as her talented cast trade remarkable vocal runs before uniting the group on the bridge “I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t fucking work” - and it just does.