ALBUM REVIEW: Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure

Fiction Records

Released: 22.10.21

Oftentimes employed as a slur in music discourse, for artists such as Rebecca Lucy Taylor ‘indulgence’ signals something entirely different and decidedly more wholesome – liberation. An emphatic payoff following one of the loudest promotional campaigns of recent years, Prioritise Pleasure is simultaneously a career high and a culmination of the no-holds-barred pop reinvention kickstarted with 2019’s Compliments Please.

Brash, unashamed and none-too-subtle, its 13 cuts rock up front-loaded with soaring choruses, voluptuous hooks and pointed refrains – many repeated for further feather-ruffling effect. The sense of triumphant, individualistic catharsis is immediate, impossible to ignore and even more difficult not to feel invested in. That it manifests in one of the year’s very finest pop records is but an added bonus!