Today, Self Esteem announces her new EP, Cuddles Please, due for release on May 1st via Fiction Records, and comprising three special alternative versions of songs from her critically acclaimed 2019 debut album Compliments Please, and a cover of Alex Cameron’s ‘Miami Memory’. A first track from the EP, ‘Favourite Problem (Alternative Version)’ is available to stream and download now.
The EP was co-produced by David Glover and Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem) and recorded with the Sheffield-based choir, Neighbourhood Voices, which was founded in 2017 with the aim of creating a safe space for Sheffield singers to find their voices. Inspired by female-led, modern pop and indie choirs, they now consist of 60 singers and performed with Self Esteem at her recent Sheffield show for independent venue week.
The announcement comes a week after Self Esteem’s self-curated three day digital festival PXSSY PANDEMIQUE with an all female-identifying line-up featuring performance artists, poets, comedians and musicians.
Chatting about Cuddles Please, Rebecca says: “After doing a run of special stripped back shows, I thought it would be nice to record some of the songs that work best in that format. I really love to sing the songs in their birthday suits. Neighbourhood Voices had been learning some of the songs anyway and suggested singing with me live and of course I jumped at the chance to have 30 women singing my feelings with me.”
Cuddles Please EP tracklisting:
1. Favourite Problem (Alternative Version)
2. The Best (Alternative Version)
3. In Time (Alternative Version)
4. Miami Memory (Alex Cameron Cover)
Self Esteem’s highly regarded debut album, Compliments Please, was released in March to a raft of glowing reviews from the likes of The Guardian (“sly, covetous pop”), Financial Times (“lithe electronic pop”), Uncut (“a heady emotional brew of pain, thwarted lust and giddy pride”), Drowned In Sound, Clash, The Line of Best Fit, DIY, Dork and more. Compliments Please (Deluxe) is out now via Fiction Records.
Self Esteem is Rebecca Lucy Taylor, and a project which began with painting and prints and video alongside her day job writing and performing as one half of Slow Club. Since her musical divergence from the band, Rebecca has revelled in unleashing a whole version of herself with no compromises, no reducing herself, no hesitating. She would go on to write the songs that had been rising up inside her all through the years — big songs, that spoke of love and sex and chaos, that brought in huge basslines, gospel choirs, the kind of polished, provocative production she admired on the biggest pop records.
Praise for Compliments Please
“sly, covetous pop – Taylor balances forcefulness with elegant and impactful production that veers from bluesy experimentalism to psychedelic soul” – 4*, The Guardian
“Compliments Please’s songs are so smart and empowering that, frankly, more people should know them.” – Sunday Times Culture
“a definitive alt-pop body of work that flirts with different genres alongside weird production that gives her big, emotional voice space to breathe” – Noisey
“Compliments Please delights me more and more with each spin” – 9/10, Drowned in Sound
“one of the most interesting and outspoken pop talents Britain has” – i-D
“a heady emotional brew of pain, thwarted lust and giddy pride” – 8/10, Uncut
“an astonishingly ambitious album of hits, bristling with pure pop intelligence”
– Loud & Quiet
“lithe electronic pop” – 4*, The Financial Times
