RAYE – THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

Brevity has very evidently fallen out of RAYE’s immediate consciousness. Just look at the 17-long tracklist of the hour-plus ‘THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.’ - her second album proper - or the characteristic exaggerated scale of her big-band styled live performances, complete with ever-flowing personal candour and energetic anecdotes that both frame songs and offer an immediately amiable tangent.

It’s all a stunning showcase of her ever-growing confidence, the resulting expanse of which bleeds into her recorded music - now a self-proclaimed attempt to separate the album from the studio, encapsulating the live feeling that has driven her sound since her major label split, and which has spearheaded her immeasurably successful step to go it alone. And ‘THIS MUSIC…’ does all that and more. 

The swaggering soul of ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’ forms just a tiny part of this immense picture; one that balances the grandeur of this lead single with RAYE’s overt vulnerability. Her lyricism is beautifully clunky, a perfect paradox of near-symbolic poetry and spoken intros which, peppered throughout the record, brim with personality. “This is a sad song, though it feels happy,” she offers at the start of the Al Green-featuring ‘Goodbye Henry’, noting that “it is not happy at all, in fact, it makes me so sad, before admitting that to protect identities, the song isn’t even about a Henry. Few, if any, artists would ever think of an intro like this one, never mind be able make it work with so much sparkling charm. 

It’s an allure that hasn’t just attracted the likes of soul legend Al, either. Record-breaking composer Hans Zimmer lends his ear to the soaring ‘Click Clack Symphony’, a track that transcends from darkness to a fitting cinematic coda. It joins a cluster that carries a post-euphoria darkness reminiscent of new-wave breakthrough ‘Escapism.’, including the claustrophobic, dark pop-jazz crossover ‘The WhatsApp Shakespeare’ and the heartbreak of ‘Winter Woman’.

But perhaps the biggest curveball on a record filled with them arrives courtesy of ‘Life Boat’, a Fred Again..-adjacent emotionally heavy rave banger accompanied by hopeful lyrical affirmations. Yet, in keeping with the ambition of the album, it breaks immediately into ‘I Hate The Way I Look Today’, a jangly homage to ‘40s bebop camp.

“We’ve made it to the end, the seventeenth song,” she declares, referring to her own verbosity on the Disney movie musical climax, which is completed by a dramatic flourish and a wide-reaching list of credits. Its spoken reference to hope pulls the absurdity of ‘THIS MUSIC…’ further together, ultimately suggesting that life is beautiful chaos.

In over an hour, RAYE traverses love, heartbreak, life, death, resilience, despondency, euphoria and the comedown, infidelity, and the powerful value of family - ‘Fields’ is a stunning collaboration with Grandad Michael, while the embellished ‘Joy’ features both RAYE’s sisters. Could it have been edited or cut down? Who cares. It’s huge, expansive, bonkers and brilliant. It’s RAYE at her very core, and it’s fantastic.