Ray’s review: This Music May Contain Hope – a hugely ambitious epic of unbridled self-expression | Pop and rock

toLast fall, Rae was the subject of a lengthy profile in a major fashion magazine. In it, the singer told a tale that put her in exactly the position you’d expect after her successful debut album: holed up in the studio with a very big-name producer, the better to cash in on his success. But the recording session was, she suggested, “ridiculous”: the producer simply showed up with a beat and expected her to sing over it. Rae refused, as she put it, “to do this dance… I was just thinking: ‘Get me out of here.'”

This story seems telling in light of This Music May Hold Hope, an album that strongly suggests an artist determined to follow her own path. The film revolves around an emotional breakdown triggered by a romantic tragedy, online criticism, a disturbing call from her grandmother, and “seven niggas,” she notes. And like Lily Allen’s West End Girl, it bucks the perceived wisdom about how people consume music in the streaming age, and is a 17-track, 73-minute concept album divided into four sections that is clearly intended to be listened to from beginning to end.

It’s full of long, occasional songs that jump unexpectedly from Ray’s distinctive old-timey soul into the world of swing-era jazz—the ghosts of Ella Fitzgerald’s early songs with the Chick Webb Band swirl around I Hate the Way I Look Today—as well as house music, show tunes, and easy-listening 1950s schmaltz. Her soprano is sometimes deployed in a distinctive operatic style. Elsewhere, her vocals take on the precise enunciation of a musical theater star. There’s a lot of rococo orchestration, much of it in the style of soundtracks from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and heavyweight guest stars. Soul music legend Al Green appears on “Goodbye Henry,” a beautiful Southern soul tribute to his classic ’70s songs, and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer arranges the Click Clack Symphony. There are fourth lyrics that break the wall (“I told you this was a sad song – I tried to warn you”) and there is a great deal of spoken word exposition.

It is, by any measure, a lot. In fact, sometimes it seems like a lot, as it teeters precariously along the line between unbridled self-expression and self-absorption. The world could probably exist without Life Boat, a deep house track overlaid with a slew of voices with different accents all saying “Never Give Up.” Or Fields, a dialogue between the singer and her grandfather, personal and honest though obvious. Some of the spoken word lyrics seem clearly surplus to requirements: it’s not really necessary to explain to the listener that they’re about to hear a song about heartbreak if the opening line of said song includes the phrase “My first love kissed me goodbye.” The album closer Finn lasts six minutes, four of which consist of Ray reading the production credits.

So there are drawbacks, but in fairness this works more often than it fails. As evidenced by the current single Nightingale Lane, its most notable landmark is a beautiful skyscraper. Beware… The South London Loverboy delivers a searing lyric – “He’ll grab your ass and squeeze it before he leans down to kiss you” – to sultry music that splits the difference between the Andrews Sisters and a mid-’60s soul act. WhatsApp Shakespeare makes dramatic use of the orchestra in the manner of John Barry, turning mid-tempo R&B into high dramatic material with its surprising transitions into swing and, ultimately, a creepy Twilight Zone atmosphere. Skin & Bones and I Know You’re Hurting are more straightforward but no less exciting, dealing respectively with powerful funk swagger and a song that builds and builds from a dark piano figure to fiery stadium rock filled with thumping metallic guitar. Rae sounds amazing throughout – she sings these songs wonderfully, and there’s nothing alternative about her approach to jazz riffs, which isn’t always natural when a pop singer turns in this direction.

Despite the moments you feel De TroopIt’s hard not to love this music, it may contain hope. It’s very ambitious, in a pop era where many artists’ ambitions extend no further than sustaining their careers. But the end result looks less like a grand artistic statement and more like an assortment of wild, brilliant, and sometimes chaotic ideas. If you needed a classic rock analogy, you could say it’s more Tusk than Rumor, or more Sandinista! From London calling. Which makes it a rare occurrence: you simply don’t get many albums like this in the 21st century, because the climate of the 21st century has led artists to be risk-averse. This is not a label you can pin on Ray.