I wrote a review of this album at the time of its release, based on a few initial listens and gut instinct. Since then I’ve had time to “break in” the album, much in the manner of a new pair of shoes, and lived with it for a while.
I remain convinced, however, that THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. is one of the most remarkable and moving albums I’ve ever heard. I have no time for professional contrarians who scoff at its alleged indulgences and pretensions, as if those two things weren’t what art was all about – for this is art, and given the nod to Allen Jones in the “Click Clack Symphony.” video there is a strong element of performance (if not performative) art at work – and therefore condescendingly patting RAYE on the head before commanding her to bend it and know her place. We know this because she attacks precisely these people in “I Will Overcome.,” the same people who undervalued or, more historically accurately, ignored Amy Whitehouse because they didn’t consider her as cool as Joss Stone. I will leave Rosalia and Lily Allen comparisons to others but overall pop music and its critics maintain the same analogous relationship as the dog and cat in this picture:
TMMCH. is a record of unanswerable brilliance that searches for answers before subtly revealing them. It proceeds as most albums worthy of that name ought; as a story, with songs as punctuation. Escalator Over The Hill, The Lexicon Of Love – you may notice a pattern in those records that I cherish above all others.
There are orchestras, specifically the London Symphony Orchestra – you cannot believe how immense and shattering their gradual presence on “I Will Overcome.” becomes, and how the song’s narrator suddenly shatters the glass pane of studied mourning to find she is standing atop a mountain that her body ached to climb. “This is a song to remind me, since I needed one” goes the bookmark of a refrain; at this early stage she is in no frame of mind to overcome the next set of cobblestones, never mind her pain – but this magnitude reminds her very forcefully that, at some stage in her life, she will have to do it.
Throughout the album’s seventy-three or so minutes, RAYE never quite manages to overcome the absolute shit that was dealt out to her in her earlier life, but she is aware (as the late Mark Fisher remarked) that digging a tunnel out of her hell has to start from where she is, and coming to terms with the hideous men who have done the shitting on her – it is suitably disorientating that the record’s two most horrible lyrical scenarios come in the guises of upbeat numbers (“Beware..The South London Lover Boy.” and “The WhatsApp Shakespeare.”), the latter of which gleefully mutates into a series of John Zorn/Mike Westbrook/Carla Bley-style rapid-fire genre pastiches, and that the musical theme of “Beware” is a mirror image of the one in “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”
The men who betray RAYE, in various shades of intensity from calling off a long-term relationship to almost killing her, are not, I think, different versions of the same man – the “Henry” of “Goodbye Henry.” who ends the affair in Tulse Hill’s Railway Tavern is not the same one who breaks up with her in “Nightingale Lane.” (which is in the G1 netherworld of Balham/Furzedown/Tooting), although the singer subtly refers to problems with drinking in both. But time and time again she ends up being rejected, in one form or another – which is why “The Winter Woman.” is so striking, more so perhaps than the forthright reportage of Rhoda Dakar and the Special A.K.A.’s “The Boiler,” because here we just feel the singer’s absolutist numbness, the hospital nightmare scenarios of getting off with Alice at the bar, petrol stations (possibly even the one next to where I once lived on Leigham Court Road), Ubers, speeded-up-in-her-head voices (which made me unavoidably thing of Charli xcx’s “Shake It”) fluttering moths of Vivaldi samples – a deliberately untouchable coldness; the Pet Shop Boys would have been proud to have helped write (that lovely ache of a progression from the chorus to “Life goes on…”) this song, but only RAYE could have sung it (“her castle on the hill where no one come or no one goes"; cf. Paul Simon's "I touch no one and no one touches me"). It is by far the record’s saddest moment, and her bird (nightingale?)-like tones in places put her surprisingly close to Elizabeth Frazer.
Yet it isn’t just about RAYE herself, this record. “Click Clack Symphony.,” as has already been observed by Rob Chapman and others, ranks alongside the great masterpieces of 1968 orchestral maximalist pop – “Eloise,” “MacArthur Park,” “Yesterday Has Gone” – and ascends to transcendental art in a way very few pop records manage (and SO many lazy kneejerk observers were caught napping by it). I first became aware of Hans Zimmer through his work on the soundtrack to the 1985 film Insignificance. That soundtrack was released on ZTT Records, and I am certain that Horn, Morley, Fry and co. have been outstandingly touched by where it has led; Zimmer embraces RAYE’s saved soul at the song’s climax as fully as Anne Dudley’s strings gave the Martin Fry of “All Of My Heart” an encyclopaedically enveloping hug. The singer has just about enough life left in her to summon her friends to run come save her, but in the end realises that she’s going to have to save herself, and not simply wait for the mythical shining knight to trot up and sweep her away (that too is the central message of “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!” – namely, that it would be VERY nice to find the right man, but it’s not ESSENTIAL…). Yet Zimmer’s score manages to do that for her, taking her thousands of miles away from the song’s initial “medieval estampie as orchestrated by Michael Nyman” approach.
(Two further notes: the general critical reluctance exhibited thus far towards TMMCH. reflects music critics' general and ongoing - and possibly hardwired - incomprehension of music made by and primarily for women. You don't get the importance of "Click Clack," men? Here's the thing - you're not supposed to; it's not meant for you.
Secondly - and I admit that this is almost certainly my twisted view alone - there is another signifier of peak ZTT as "Click Clack" moves patiently towards its cathartic [self]-release;; the siren you hear at the beginning of the Annihilation Mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes" reappears, and given the almost empty suburban greyness that represents this moment in the song's video, I did wonder whether this was the last chance to dance before...the bomb dropped? Yes, I clearly need to get out the house more...)
“Click Clack” marks the point in the record where the idea of the sun breaking out from behind the metaphorical grey cloud first becomes apparent – and it is at precisely this point that the record begins to break away from pure self-examination. One of the many reasons why “I Know You’re Hurting.” is so great a song and record is that RAYE turns away from herself to face and address us, her listeners. In the song’s video, filmed at Abbey Road Studios, she performs entirely while sitting on the floor (and occasionally adjusting her headphone input). Any professional singer who knows about the importance of singing from the diaphragm rather than the larynx alone will immediately recognise just how difficult it is to do that, not to mention some exemplary dramatic work with her hands and upper body – although a conductor is present (albeit with his back to her), she seems to be directing the entire proceedings as she sings.
But what a song. Never mind “Everybody Hurts” (as great as it is) – “I Know You’re Hurting.” reaches through the fourth wall like no other pop song has really ever managed (Kevin Rowland, to whose My Beauty TMMCH. owes, I think, a great emotional and structural deal) – and it is wholly based on one simple three-chord vamp. Sometimes contemplative, more often sorrowful – there’s a remarkable, almost tearful quiver in RAYE’s voice when it becomes especially emotional – and climactically forceful when needed, her vocal performance here is exemplary, down or up to the wearied ski slopes of “Oh-oooh-woah-wooah” and the candid reserve which immediately prefaces any emotional catharsis. It feels as though the tortured epic landscape which arranger John Cameron variously painted in Kathe Green’s “Run The Length Of Your Wildness” and Suzi Quatro’s “Angel Flight” – the latter, like TMMCH., is structured around the four seasons and concludes with the same wind that ends “Click Clack.” – has been redefined. And unlike any of its epic predecessors, RAYE crouches down (which is why she’s sitting down in the video) at the end and implores her listeners – that is, US – not to kill ourselves. Does art have any higher purpose than to heal?
Following “Hurting” with “Life Boat.” is emotionally difficult to endure. The latter is ostensibly an EDM “banger” with as many build-ups and climaxes as Daft Punk’s “One More Time” had demonstrated a quarter of a century earlier. But it is also a mantra, repeating its essential plea of “I’m not giving up yet” in as many voices and settings as are manageable, as well as incorporating a long monologue from a beaten-down old man which you would not encounter in any bland wellness workout playlists. Even RAYE herself isn’t out of the sinking yet – she’s cried an ocean and tried not to drown in it, after all – but the point here, as already intimated by the “you don’t have to do this all alone” of “Hurting,” is that everyone is in the same sinking boat, and we all have to work together in order to ensure that we don’t give up (on life – RAYE’s cry of “SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!” might be the record’s single most cathartic moment*).
(*unless you count the track's unspoken catharsis, namely that "Life Boat." also serves as the answer to and ultimate rebuttal of RAYE's early major label days as dance featurette and songwriter-to-rote; those Jax Jones and David Guetta tracks turned out to have their uses...)
After the autumn and winter must therefore come spring, and RAYE is faced with the same problems but has now found different means to deal with them. “I Hate The Way I Look Today” is a jolly Rose Murphy/Blossom Dearie-style jazz fingersnapper, complete with “Your Father’s Moustache” big band unison vocals, a cracking tenor solo by Graeme Blevins and cheerful studio chat at its end (Buddy Rich on the tour bus this is not) - about body dysmorphia. But RAYE, as depressed as she might initially be to stare in her mirror, is now more resolved to be IMPRESSED by what she sees; in other words…she is OVERCOMING herself.
There follow two further songs about break-ups, but neither is especially wintry. “Goodbye Henry.” plays with very Kevin Rowland-esque narrative devices, repeatedly issuing sung disclaimers about, regardless of how happy it might sound, this is an extremely SAD song – but to “Henry” she now wishes only her tearful best to him, realising that there was no big reason why they split…just that, sometimes, people grow apart. This is underlined by guest singer The Reverend Al Green – as with Dizzy Gillespie on Stevie Wonder’s “Do I Do,” RAYE is somewhat dazed and can’t believe that the great Al Green himself has agreed to sing on Her Album – who offers words of ancient wisdom and interacts splendidly with RAYE, with the aid of a few nice references to his own back catalogue - as the song continues to modulate to higher and higher keys, like Beyoncé’s “Love On Top” before unexpectedly climaxing with a spoken-word coda that could have come straight from Sarah Cracknell on Saint Etienne’s Tales From Turnpike Lane.
“Nightingale Lane,” however. I’ve said before that Aretha or Dusty would have been absolutely honoured to have sung this song, and both should certainly have lived to hear it. There is, on its surface, little to say; the two lovers break up on a nondescript street in the borough of Wandsworth, and every time she drives down that same street, many years later, all that she now sees behind her closed eyes (when she stops at red lights) are ghosts and memories.
And yet the emotion that RAYE summons up in this song ranks among the greatest expressions of emotion I’ve ever heard on a pop record. This is of course aided by a wonderful arrangement and orchestration – she has a knack of not quite singing behind the beat but using the structures of song to narrate a story; that is, the emotions come first and the music builds itself around them. Each chorus is rawer and more forceful than the last, and her climactic howl of lament – carefully built up by an ascending series of high-register quivers, like refugees from Victorian parlour ballads - is Lorraine Ellison-level shattering. Has any combination of voice and orchestra ever sounded so sheerly powerful? And just before the FINAL and presumably cataclysmic climax – she backs down, and ends quietly and matter-of-factly in her lower register, over one piano chord. People who tell you that nothing great can ever happen in pop music again are deaf and blind if they can’t recognise greatness in this recording, because – well, why? Because there is now HOPE. She was loved once and is certain she will be loved again. Without that certainly, one gives up on life. “Nightingale Lane” is, finally, in one of the most misapplied of contemporary adjectives, “uplifting,” on the side of carrying on with living.
She’s making a steely effort now, but the cards remained stacked against her. “Skin & Bones” is fantastic Renewed Jill Swing, with brilliant vocal octave leaps of punctum, yelling in pity about sad men who just want sex without love (the way RAYE renders three syllables out of the word “nose”!), is worthy, especially in its latter moments with interacting splinters of beats and trumpet obbligato, of prime Michael Jackson (N.B.: this is, musically, a GOOD thing). It is also the other side of the “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!” coin – the same busy lament from two different perspectives and one of the greatest pop songs of this millennium thus far.
The call for a “husband,” however metaphorical, introduces the concept of…family. Realising that actually she has never really been alone – her grandmother, after all, appears at the end of the record’s introduction, and again on “HUSBAND” – she turns, firstly, to her grandfather Michael; they alternately sing “Fields.” together and talk to each other, and here we realise that it’s all about continuity, about singing the songs of someone close to us while they’re still here and after they’ve gone, effectively keeping them alive.
And when RAYE finally pushes herself out of the slough of despond in “Joy” – a dynamic Housey disco workout with brisk Salsoul strings – she dampens the intensity and gives the song over to her two sisters. What a song, with its references to Psalm 91 – which, you may notice, also gave rise to the title of Sinéad O’Connor’s first album – its declarations of principle (“I AM SOMEBODY!,” “THERE WILL BE JOY!”). If it isn’t going to happen to us, we’ll get up and make it happen. Joy whether anyone else likes it or not! Note also how its central refrain of “I may cry through the night but my joy comes in the morning” refers directly to the theme of RAYE’s 2024 single “Genesis.,” which now sounds like a bridge between her first and second albums – real world sunshine triumphing over internet darkness.
Finally, in “Happier Times Ahead.” (which probably sounds more like Amy Winehouse than anything else on this record), RAYE turns her attention back to the world – note that the woman sipping coffee at the front of Caffè Nero on Streatham High Road (just a guess) is the literal mirror image of the “old me” glimpsed in the Chanel boutique window in Paris – and she ends up wishing everybody – us, the world – all the best, finally breaking song to reassure us that the sun was there behind the cloud all the time; we just had to wait for the cloud to move or be moved in order to see it. She hasn’t found her ultimate happiness yet…but, unlike the drunken woman stumbling through early morning Paris at the beginning of this record, she’s trying, she’ll get there – maybe the record’s most frightening yet also most assertive moment comes in the middle of “Winter Woman.” when she vows to “make her name a word you won’t forget.” THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. contains advice on how to do this.
It ends, this record, like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, looking back at the dawning days of the album chart when what people wanted were songs from the show, on sale in the foyer. When albums were albums and told stories. A gleeful, slightly-dazed orchestral waltz in which RAYE thanks us for listening, advises us to listen to it again if we didn’t glimpse any hope in it – with truly great albums, one listen is NEVER enough – before devoting the rest of the album to reading out the credits, in case you wondered why there weren’t any on its sleeve. She takes four-and-a-half minutes to do that on this occasion, as opposed to the thirty or so seconds she devoted to it on My 21st Century Blues. It’s an enormously generous gesture, emphasising that, although this is certainly her album, it isn’t necessarily about her, that some two hundred people worked to make it come together. It’s also the sort of thing you used to find on children’s records (from “Fields.”; “When did I go from being a kid, my mum tucking me into bed?”). It comforted and reassured you. And if comfort and reassurance aren’t what we always look for in art – although they are certainly the two foremost things for which we look in life – then TMMCH. is a fitting response to its inadvertent BRIT School blood brother, Geordie Greep’s The New Sound; where the latter is a crushing indictment of a man so utterly crushed by life that he can only imagine things happening to him, RAYE tells us how we can get out of that crush and ultimately defeat it. She says she will not begin work on her third album until she has met someone and fallen in love. I have not the slightest doubt that she will make it happen. THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. is one of the greatest albums made by anybody. As a 62-year-old whose body daily aches as a result of climbing my mountains, and whose friends similarly worked to get me out of the house – my castle on the hill (and it was exactly the same Hill) where no one came or no one went (until I learned to invite them) - more than twenty years ago, I ought to know.
