Quite often, when an artist releases a new album, the reviews say “this is their most personal yet”. Generally, though, you can take that with a pinch of salt. The writer may just be searching for something to say that would give you a reason to listen to it. In the case of Kae Tempest’s Self Titled, though, there’s no room for doubt. This new album chronicles his transition from the girl born as Kate in 1985, through the non-binary poet and musician of the early 2020s, to the trans man he revealed earlier this year. Nothing could be more personal.

As the default variety of human male, I will never be able to understand what drives some people to transition in this way – it’s too far outside my experience for me to imagine. I confess, I mourn the loss of the Kate who gave us Let Them Eat Chaos in 2016, but that doesn’t stop me from celebrating the work of this year’s Kae. And Self Titled is another sure-footed step forward on that artist’s musical journey.

As with K. Tempest’s earlier albums, the songs are built around the intelligent, incisive and insightful lyrics. But, once again, the quality of the backing tracks is astonishingly good. I think we can safely thank Fraser Smith, Kae’s producer and musical collaborator, for that.

“In my live show, I like to take a line from each of the songs at some point in the set and weave them all together and start repeating things that people have heard before. It gives this cumulative trance-like power to the whole experience. As the album was finished, I was saying to Fraser, ‘I want to make this kind of master poem,’ so I took a line from each of the songs and wove them together. We got all the session files up and took the horn line from that song, the snare from that song, one little piano part from that song, so there’s something from every single song and we put it on a grid almost like it was artwork rather than music work. We did it by eye rather than listening to it and then pressed play on that loop. It’s like the soul of the album speaking. It tells you everything that you’ve just heard and everything you’re about to hear.”

About “Everything All Together” on Apple Music.

The Kae Tempest band will be live at Rough Trade in Nottingham on Wednesday (16th July). If you are in the area, you won’t want to miss it.