A bold and heady mix of modern feminism and well-crafted tunes.

‘I Do And I Don’t Care’ opens the album as a bold statement of intent. The choir backed open seems ever so Self Esteem, yet then the track breaks things down to just Rebecca Lucy Taylor musing over quieter backing in a way not dissimilar to the opening of the recent Benefit’s album. Then it builds back into life with the repeated refrain of, ‘If I’m so empowered, why am I such a coward? If I’m so strong, why am I broken?’ over soaring strings and the choir carries the refrain even higher. Wow. Then there is no pause as we are straight into the monster single ‘Focus is Power.’ This is career high songwriting from one of Britain’s current greatest talents.

Taylor is not one to take the easy path, a rare bastion of artistic integrity in a modern music scene tinged with the desperation to connect to the biggest, widest audience possible at any cost. This album was launched with a week of shows at the Duke of York Theatre that bought out the theatrical elements of the work, removing it from being a purely musical work. Taylor is an artist in multiple senses of the word.

‘Mother’ has a higher bpm dance backing married to searing lyrics admonishing a love interest of their various unhealthy relationship issues. “I am not your mother, Nor should you want me to be… I am not your therapist, You don’t pay me enough for this. Work on your own shit, yeah, ’cause it’s your shit and get back to me. I am not your cleaner.” It is explosive in its targeted destruction of a modern male clinging to an outdated Trump/Tate fantasy of what a relationship should be. I’m struggling to think of a better deployment of f-bombs in a song than ‘The Curse’ does.

Given that most of the music industry would queue up and leap at the chance to collaborate with Self Esteem the guest spots on here are understated. Each artist is chosen for the qualities they can bring to extend a track further than it would go on its own. The contribution from Moonchild Sanelly, a South African poet, musician and dancer, on ‘In Plain Sight’ takes a great track and turns it supernova.

There will be a subset of people out there who will not connect with this album, who will accuse it of being too woke, too aggressive in its attack of the patriarchy. These people are clearly wrong and why albums of this nature are essential. Until there is an absolutely level playing field out there it needs women like Rebecca Lucy Taylor to be fierce, to be intense, to be a complicated woman. Others may say it is not as good as previous album, ‘Prioritise Pleasure.’ That album was a sensational piece of boundary shifting experimental pop music. This is not doing the same thing, or trying to shift the boundaries further. A Complicated Woman revels in the smaller details, it goes back and forth on points, lacking the confidence and sense of absolute purpose Prioritise Pleasure possessed but for me that makes it even more beautiful and human. Yes, the choir is deployed a lot on this album, but boy, do they sound fantastic. All in all, this is superb and is another album going into the debate for albums of the year once December comes around.