Gorilla, ManchesterWith huge choruses and head-flicking 90s dance moves, Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s performance is a maximalist pop triumph
It’s only the first song of the night, but half the crowd are baying like dogs. Delirious enthusiasm is, of course, the correct response to Self Esteem’s maximalist pop. A few hundred people are crammed into what may be the last of Sheffield-bred singer-songwriter Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s many jaunts around the bijou venues of
Britain, as Self Esteem and in previous bands. Taylor has recently released her second solo album, Prioritise Pleasure, an audacious hymn to self-actualisation and dreaming big, to rave reviews. Next year, Self Esteem is booked to play Manchester Cathedral.
But the din, more suited to the peak of the encore, comes much earlier, at the close of the set-opener, I’m Fine. In a sample, a young woman describes warding off unwanted male attention by barking like a dog because “there is nothing that terrifies a man more than a woman that appears completely deranged”. The wolf noises that break out tonight are an echo of recognition – of the lunatic things
Women have to do to cope with the craziness of male threat. It feels so good, too, when your pack gives tongue.