“I warned you, dear listener, didn’t I?” Raye declares halfway through her new album. “When I told you this was a sad, sad, saaaad song?” She isn’t joking about that. The south London belter has a story to tell on This Music May Contain Hope, and it’s an epic autobiography of romantic despair and nonstop emotional turmoil. Her mighty pipes are as unstoppable as her flair for mascara-melting melodrama.
It’s only the second album Raye has ever made, but it’s the first since she scored her global breakthrough last year, with her fantastic hit “Where Is My Husband?” She caught the world’s ear with her jazzy torch ballad, pleading for her Prince Charming to hurry up and find her, fuming, “This man is testing me!”
On This Music May Contain Hope, the 28-year-old Rachel Keen expands the song to album size — and then some. It’s a lavish 73-minute narrative, spread out over four season-themed acts and 17 songs. “I am a sob story,” she confesses in “Winter Woman,” but she makes no apologies for that at all. It’s one long pageant starring Raye as not just the main character, but the only character, piling on the Old Hollywood strings and juicy narrative detail. She packs it full of old-school show-tune razzle-dazzle, big-band swing frills, retro Sixties R&B, the occasional club beat, and an endless supply of glamorously tragic scenarios.
“Allow me to set the scene,” Raye says in the opening moments. “Our story begins at 2:27 a.m. on a rainy night in Paris. Cue the thunder!” But Raye wants to be the thunder in this story. She’s the heroine, stumbling in her stilettos back to her hotel room. “She has no umbrella, she is seven negronis deep, and she nurses a hole she is desperately trying to fill.” Nobody at the bar even noticed her in her chic red dress, so she’s by herself, unzipping her own dress and removing her lashes. In her head, she hears the voice of the man who recently dumped her. On her phone, there’s a voice note from her grandmother saying “Call me please. We need to pray.”
It sounds like the perfect recipe for an emotional crisis. But for Raye, as it turns out, this is just a typical night. “I Will Overcome” sets the tone as she gives herself a pep talk, declaring, “This is a song to remind me/Since I needed one/I will overcome.” She staggers home alone, counting the steps in her head, since her phone battery died a few drinks ago, but then throws herself a solitary late-night party where she listens to her Edith Piaf records, eats chocolate cake, jumps up and down on her bed. “It’s funny,” she muses. “Some people say I remind them of Amy.” But that’s no surprise, given that she’s self-consciously gunning for the Winehouse legacy in so many ways.
Her best songs are her witty tales of romantic espionage in London after dark. “The South London Lover Boys” warns about a lothario who turns on the flirtatious banter (“I’m too toxic for you, darling,” he tells her — and she swoons) over bouncy, brassy jazz pop. “He’ll pull up on you in an all-black car,” she sings, “And start reading you poems out the window.” She tangles with a similar adversary in “The WhatsApp Shakespeare,” who wins her heart, but then burns her with his “weapons of mass seduction.” She’s a Juliet who falls hard for this Romeo, only to find that she’s just one of seven leading ladies “starring in the new romantic thriller, presenting The WhatsApp Shakespeare Killer.”
She gets help from her crew of producers, including Chris Hill, Tom Richards, and Pete Clements. “Click Clack Symphony” is an ode to the sound of heels on the city street, as she and her girls head out for a night on the town, orchestrated by the film-soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer. But “Winter Woman” is the weepy flip side — heading home alone after striking out at the club, making the driver pull over at the petrol station for a bottle of gin. “Skin & Bones” ups the tempo, with its clever tweaks from 1970s Aretha Franklin soul (“Rock Steady”) and 1980s Taana Gardner disco (“Heartbeat”).
“Goodbye Henry” is a tribute to vintage Memphis R&B, with the album’s biggest surprise: a duet with the legend Al Green himself. Raye, not one to underplay a dramatic moment, gives him a splashy “Ladies and gentlemen!” introduction. “Hello, hi, hope you’re doing well!” the Rev. Green greets her. “It’s nice to be on the microphone with a story to tell.” (Drummer Mike Brooks adds an impressively precise Al Jackson Jr. backbeat.) She duets with her grandfather in “Fields” — she calls him to ask if he gets this lonely too — and sings “Joy” with her sisters Amma and Absolutely.
The obvious comparison would be Lily Allen’s West End Girl, another heartbreak concept album that captured the public imagination by aiming big, narrative-wise, stretching out the story song by song. Both Allen and Raye challenge the listener to keep up with the plot twists, defying all the conventional wisdom about the audience’s attention span these days. Both albums get scathingly honest about two-timing exes. But while Allen chronicles the down side of marriage, divorce, and parenthood, Raye’s turf is first love and the twentysomething dating pool. (If she thinks it sucks not having a husband, she may wish to consult Allen about what it’s like having one.) She begins “Nightingale Alley” with the words “This is a song about the greatest heartbreak I have ever known,” even though it’s halfway through the album and she’s already up to double-digit GOAT heartbreaks.
Raye takes great mischievous pride in making the album much, much, much longer than it needed to be. That’s part of the charm — there’s something stubborn about how she delights in testing your patience. In her farewell “Fin,” she tops off the cinematic mood by saying “Roll credits!” then reading the album’s complete production notes for four minutes. There’s no shortage of filler, novelties, throwaways, homilies about lessons to be learned, though even bombs like “Life Boat” are clearly personal and sincere. What, you want to accuse her of being self-indulgent? She’s way ahead of you there, pal. But self-indulgence is the whole point of This Music May Contain Hope, and the album wouldn’t work at all without her flamboyant grandiosity. “Cold never lasts, my darlings,” she announces. “It just teaches the heart how to burn.” Here’s hoping Raye keeps that fire raging.
Matt Collyer of The Planet Smashers