Abstract
Self Esteem; Empire Street Productions, 2022; 54:13; £22.99 (vinyl)
Much has been written about Suzie Miller’s play Prima Facie, 1 which follows a criminal defence barrister whose view of the legal system changes after she is sexually assaulted, but less has been written on the soundtrack of its West End production. Composed by British singer-songwriter Self Esteem (aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor), who was invited to join the creative team for the play, the soundtrack follows her critically acclaimed album Prioritise Pleasure, 2 which she says ‘could score this play. We’re dealing with the same things that I’m talking about’, 3 albeit in a more instrumental form. The two albums are self-referential, with the lyrics of ‘I’m Fine’, which opens Prioritise Pleasure, reprised in the final track of Prima Facie, ‘1 in 3 (I’m Free)’: ‘I won’t rein in my need to be completely free.’ The two are also thematically linked as they both explore the expectations and experiences of women in the public sphere – sexism, misogyny and behavioural policing.
The soundtrack is evocative – combining body percussive sounds of deep breathing, gasping for air, puffing, clapping, and slapping on skin, with electronic beats – and complements the play’s narrative, adding to its tension and providing a beat that propels its action.
‘Cross Examination’, through its percussive dimensions of slaps, handclaps, beats, and tinks, ending in a repeated solitary clap, evokes the staccato nature of witness examination, not free flowing but broken into beats by the back-and-forth nature of questions and answers. ‘Chambers’, in its slow breaths, guttural hums, and gradually building soundscape, gives off the vibe of a warm-up to the colosseum of the courtroom, redolent of the opening number ‘The Winner’ that starts simply before building into a complex soundscape almost screeching in quality. The combativeness of the legal process is here reflected in sound, and in the simple gestures of breath and body percussion. ‘Day Through’ oscillates between gasping for air and panting, a refrain that recurs in ‘The Process’ and builds to a sped-up crescendo before suddenly dissipating. This dog-like panting echoes a story told in ‘I’m Fine’:
Something
That me and my friends actually do
If we are approached by a group of men
We will bark like dogs and people always laugh at it
And they're like, ‘That’s so funny’
But there is nothing that terrifies a man
More than a woman that appears
Completely deranged
A strange acoustic number, ‘Perfect 2 Me’, sticks out, but then is given a more haunting rendition with a pitched-down voice manipulator in ‘Perfect 2 Me (Reprise)’. That is followed by two similarly haunting songs, ‘Second Place (Cab Rank Rule)’ and ‘Lean Back and Think of Justice’, that seem a more explicit commentary on the legal system, its rules, and its ideals of justice. This section ends in a piece fittingly titled, ‘I Have No Power Here’.
Towards the end, ‘How Dare You’ hauntingly repeats the word ‘how’ to a thumping bass, as voices laid over each other increase in a feverish pitch. Yet the album finishes on a positive note. ‘To See From Here (Reprise 2)’ contrasts most of the album with its light piano notes and gentle hums that echo the guitar strums and chirping birds of the earlier ‘To See From Here (Reprise)’, even more pared back than the initial ‘To See From Here’ that has the feeling of a whole orchestra behind it. Then, the fitting finale, ‘1 in 3 (I’m Free)’, ends in an extended word – ‘free’ – sung to a floating, ethereal soundscape.
Why consider this album amidst a sea of articles on law? This practice of considering an album as a legal form invites us to attend to the musicalisation of law and, perhaps further, to ‘law as music’. 4 Law sounds different to other phenomena and this soundtracking of a (fictional) legal event exposes that in its aural glory, in turn raising questions of how the noise of law might drown out other voices and sounds.
The album also points to something often missed in the bureaucratic bizarreries of legal process: its particularly human dimension and the living and breathing humans, in this case women, that effect and are affected by legal processes. This is a theme that has been picked up in other artistic forms, including Carey Young’s photographic work, Appearance, 5 but here it is rendered in musical form. Within the album, the electronic sounds are contrasted by sounds that recall the body, in all its breathiness, that its ultimately regulated by laws on sexual assault. In doing so, the album reminds us of the bodies of law that are so often ignored.
