A RAYE OF DELIGHT

The brilliant London singer throws vocal virtuosity and infectious pleasure into every moment of her second album, ‘This Music May Contain Hope’, writes Helen Brown

- Helen Brown

“I’ll swing round this street lamp and I’ll give you a story...” promises Raye on This Music May Contain Hope. And boy, does she deliver, with an epic Technicolor movie of an album. The artist born Rachel Keen leans hard into the romance of vintage Hollywood melodrama while keeping a witty, modern head on her shoulders. Trad and cocktail jazz, blues, pop, sax solos, Prince-indebted power balladry, silky neo-soul, chamber music, funk, house, hip-hop, and accordion-backed chanson... it all comes pelting round the bends for a series of closeup cameos. Such fearless musicianship sets a stage on which great love can die like a phone battery, toxic south London lover-boys stalk the streets like B-movie beasties and our plucky high-heeled heroine must put on her headphones to dance away her despair.