On the variety show-style poster for this tour, Raye pledged her gigs would contain everything from dramatic endings to a jazz cover via a nightclub segment, a brass band, and “musical medicine for those in need”.
She also promised new music. Ahead of her forthcoming album This Music May Contain Hope, she teases its contents from the off, with I Will Overcome. Raye is in a long fake fur coat, leather gloves and sunglasses, looking like the lead from a film noir with the song as its soundtrack: she begins with third-person narration but switches into singing as the character she’s created. When the curtain drops, it reveals a huge band that launches into the rousing and infectious funk stomp of Where Is My Husband!. Raye and her singers reappear in sparkling red dresses, creating an air of elegance and glamour reminiscent of old school Vegas, before thundering drums, brass and strings collide with the theatrical heft of a James Bond number. It’s a beginning so huge that it resembles a finale. “I’ve fully entered my dramatic era,” Raye declares.
Big, bold, emphatic yet intimate … Raye. Photograph: Aaron Parsons Photography/The Guardian
While the show is big, bold and emphatic, it’s also intimate. The stage turns into a little jazz club at one point where Raye delivers a playful cover of Fly Me to the Moon. There are several more mood shifts, too, from the neo-soul grooves of Suzanne, to the heartbreaking piano ballad of Ice Cream Man, about sexual violence.
The nightclub segment – where a Raye sign gets turned into one that says rave – is fully dedicated to giddy release. She veers into house on You Don’t Know Me, then leans even further into euphoric dance on Prada. A new song, Joy, is a celebration of the emotion, fusing full-band disco and 1960s soul. It’s testament to Raye’s skills as a vocalist, and her formidable band, that she can switch gears so seamlessly, turning the vast arena from a whispered croon one moment into a Europop dance party the next.
She delivers a knockout version of Escapism for an encore and the huge band roars one last time to shattering effect, very much establishing her dramatic era.
Raye plays Co-Op Live, Manchester, 18 February; then touring UK until 2 March