Album Review: RAYE, THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE

You don’t recruit Hans Zimmer for your album unless you’re aiming for cinematic proportions, and RAYE has done just that.

On THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE, the London singer-songwriter expands upon the musical palette she established in her acclaimed 2023 debut My 21^st Century Blues to create a genre-bending, 73-minute audio experience that has all the technicolour drama of a classic Hollywood film. It's an ambitious concept, to say the least, but RAYE sells it with such aplomb that you have no choice but to follow her from scene to scene, her big band blaring close behind.

There’s never a dull moment throughout the album’s 17 tracks. RAYE plays with jazz, blues, RnB, and even dubstep as she keeps the momentum going with frequent shifts in tempo and vibe. Few pop stars have pulled off genre fusion to this extent—save for Beyoncé and Rosalía—and there’s a reason why: you need an extremely capable instrument to handle those stylistic switch-ups. Though RAYE’s massive range is no secret, her facility continues to astonish in unexpected and expansive ways throughout the epic LP.

Highlights include the bright and brassy ‘Beware... The South London Lover Boy’ and the call-and-response groover ‘Skin and Bones’. RAYE announces the arrival of the jazz-clubby ‘I Hate The Way I Look Today’ with a smirky, spoken-word announcement, then croons, "Today, it's not giving beautiful / It's giving train wreck, it's giving unfortunate" before ending the track with an invitation for her band to grab a cuppa.

From there, she segues into ‘Goodbye Henry’, whose subject she asserts "isn’t even [named] Henry, but I’m just tryna be respectful" before handing the mic to Al Green. The surprises are always dopamine-fueled, never whiplash-inducing, and it's genuine fun to try to guess where RAYE will go next.

A lot of these tracks run long—too long for radio. Since her 2021 break with Polydor, RAYE hasn't seemed to give a whit about radio conventions, much to her listeners' benefit. (One notable exception is earworm ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’, whose radio-ready length and already-iconic wordy bridge render it the perfect musical pick-me-up.)

THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE is often campy and over-the-top, depositing its doses of despair with a little wink. But when RAYE gets real, you can hear it. On ‘I Know You’re Hurting’, she sings with soul like we’ve never heard her before, throwing truth bombs with compelling candour: “Ain’t this some damn feeling? / Ain't all of us just looking for some healing?”

Features from her grandparents and sisters (artists Amma and Absolutely) further ground the album while adding levity. It's a joy (see antepenultimate track 'Joy'!) to hear their heartfelt collaboration.

Like on My 21^st Century Blues, RAYE ends THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE by rolling the credits. But what was last time a 30-second interlude is now a six-and-a-half-minute exercise, as RAYE lists no fewer than 200 names of those who helped her put out the LP. The bespoke ritual, which she refers to as "a musical hug and an orchestral kiss", sets her apart from other artists of her magnitude, who usually save their crediting for the album liner.

In a world of increasingly blasé pop stars, RAYE is a breath of fresh air, or maybe a sun ray through the clouds, per her album art. Her vintage stylings coupled with modern references and tantalising wit make THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN HOPE a treat to consume. She's making some of the most striking music to reach today's highest heights, and we're all better for it.

9.5/10