Album Review Kate Tempest - The Book of Traps and Lessons

Like her two previous Mercury-nominated albums, ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’ sees Kate Tempest cast a critical eye over modern Britain, exploring the detrimental effects of our current political narrative and how, together with the isolation and anxiety that social media brings, we are a society broken.

“The racist is drunk on the train / The racist is drunk on the internet” she cuts on ‘All Humans Too Late’. Instead of working to repair the damage Brexit has caused, she highlights how we are instead “online, venting our outrage / Teaching the future that life is performance and vanity.”

While this is perhaps Tempest’s darkest work to date, there is light and hope to be found too, like on the tender ‘Firework’, an emotive ode to her partner. On ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’ Kate Tempest continues to impress as one of the UK’s most vital voices.