The Book of Traps and Lessons (2019) Kate Tempest

Stella Carruthers | She/Her

5/5 STARS

The crowd is clad in Wellington black. Suits and shiny shoes have been replaced by scuffed Doc’s and black Lee skinnies. It’s a full house. The energy of the Michael Fowler Centre feels electric. Full of anticipatory energy for what is to come.

She’s smaller than I expected. But her presence is fucking huge. Even before she speaks, it is in the way she circles the stage like a wild animal scouting out its territory. Satisfied all is well in her golden wilderness, she turns to us, the dark crowd. Out calls a voice we know well from political poems and social commentary raps. But there is also a ringing sense of rest to her tone. A pause I feel, that says as much as the words she speaks.

Kate Tempest is a problematic prophet. She is a political poet and a remembered-for-her-wit rapper. She is also a novelist and playwright. There is nothing she does not do when it comes to words. Hailing from the UK and identifying strongly with her hometown of London, Tempest is not only a writer. She is also a spoken word performer with four albums to her name. She won the prestigious Ted Hughes Award in 2013 and is known for her insights into the emotional landscapes of humanity. These are certainly not all pretty places.

Tempest’s latest album The Book of Traps and Lessons (2019) looks at our current world order. This is a world firmly placed off the scenic route. I think of this record as an example of a protest album at its best. It protests both the current situation as well as the actions and events that got us here.

Tempest, as she did in her previous work, uses formal poetic devices well. As she states in significant metaphoric gesture in “Thirsty”, “My eyes were like shovels in the soil of the sky". Meanwhile, her piece “Keep Moving, Don’t Move” is startling in its simple power. 

Both her use of poetic device, her ability in spoken word rhythms and her wider societal commentary make this album powerful in its message about a world in crisis. Not just humanity. But the whole god-damn world. Tempest is not afraid of addressing the big issues—of facing up to the dark shit.

While her poems are very much focused on human experience, and while human-induced crisis is at the heart of her work, The Book of Traps and Lessons takes this theme further by expressing a more vast sense of the issues of our times. In “People’s Faces” Tempest asks with a ringing truth "Couldn't we be doing this differently?"

I consider this latest offering by Tempest not as a static entity but as a thing alive. It evolves every time I listen to it. I hear new things. Or re-hear remembered things differently. Due to this sense of life, I feel this album has a voice. It is not just Tempest’s voice speaking. She is speaking on behalf of humanity. She is calling us out on the things that are hard to think about but desperately need to be considered if we are to survive these times.

I have hope because there are people like Tempest swearing and shouting us to consciousness. That her listeners are dressed like they were going to a hipster funeral is a bonus. I am hopeful because they stood and clapped for five minutes of encore as Tempest called us to account for ourselves in the world.