QR music review: Estrons - you say i'm too much, I say you're not enough
Self-proclaimed Heavy Pop band Estrons (Welsh for ‘misfits’) debut album You Say I’m Too Much, I Say You’re Not Enough has the four-piece combine elements of both the modern music and social landscape to create an imperative record. As in-your-face, reckless and unapologetic as You Say… is, it is equal parts calculated and aimed. Full of lust, swagger and confidence, songwriters Tali Källström and Rhodri Daniel bring brashness and the female form into full view throughout the entirety of the album, creating compelling messages and ferocious highs along the way.
One only has to take a cautionary glance down the list of song names to gain an insight into the vibe of the album. Titles such as 'Make a Man,” “Body' and 'Cameras' have an implied sadistic voyeurism, a suggestion of control and regulation, that is frequently combated throughout You Say. This malevolent theory is immediately corroborated by album opener Lilac, a dark fable filled with teeth-rattlingly violent imagery of an aggressive relationship between a woman and “the man that she’s never met,” who "won't rest till (she's) in my bed." The song fades out without a happy ending in sight, a telling foreshadow.
Do not be mistaken however in thinking this album can be so typified as a punk record fuelled by primal rage. This is a calculated, intelligent middle finger to toxic masculinity and the practices that protect it. Razor sharp and cynical, Källström is the latest in a line of front-women (think Christine and The Queens and Anna Calvi) discontent to have control of her person wrested from her by nameless faces and an unfair system, instead opting to take control of her rage-fuelled sexuality and use it as a driving creative force. Often the dominant passionate figure in her stories, such as 'Make A Man' (“I’d like to make a man of you… I’d like to fuck you and fuck you) and Body (“You make my body go oh oh OH”), Källström is often pictured firmly behind the wheel. Blasphemous to imagine she'd be anywhere else.
Not restricted to fire though, You Say... has its vulnerable, and best, moments on mid-album track Strangers. Brimming with questions, Källström bares her soul and laments her faults ("My conscience needs an intervention… I’ve been trying to change myself again, won't you please just take me as I am”), displaying an as of yet unseen fragility behind her fangs. Albeit, present throughout the juxtapositions is a terrifying sincerity, bordering on anger, that makes Källström believable. It is in this undeniable honesty that listeners find an affinity with her, a kinship that can be born only of truth.
As the album ends, I am drawn to the title. Defiant at first glance, but also with a hint of a pain. A statement designed to hurt, followed by an answer that effectively boils down to “I know you are but what am I,” amidst a maelstrom of emotion and candour, suggest an autobiographical context. The pain present in You Are... seems to agree. Where once was pain, however, then came resolve, which has in turn given way to results. Someone couldn’t match the dynamism of Källström in the past. Perhaps this may have hurt her once. Now, its merely proof she’s doing something right. An essential debut album for a band entirely unafraid of what they have to say.
By Benjamin Magee