Review: RAYE Live at the O2 Ritz Manchester
It may be just a Tuesday night in Manchester, where the temperature sits in the single digits, and the sky seems a particularly mundane shade of grey, but when RAYE sways onto the stage in the o2 Ritz we are transported.
Transported to a 1950s jazz club in Harlem where the greats like Billie Holiday and Etta James have graced the stage. Where the band is dressed in white tuxedos and the brass section plays like their instruments are an extension of their bodies. Where warm spotlights illuminate the singer, adorned in a white silk three-piece suit, hair the same undone bob as Marilyn Monroe. It feels like we should be sitting at small tables with velvet tablecloths and low-lit lamps, not standing elbow-to-elbow like meerkats.
RAYE takes the time to connect with the audience over her set, avoiding any old clichés performers tend to copy-and-paste and instead displaying a rare candor as she discusses her struggles with addiction, body image and traumas from past relationships. She opens up about favorite songs to perform and how one of her biggest hits, “BED” is one of her least favorite songs even though, “my bank account loved it”. These unflinching, often wandering, anecdotes don’t burden the audience, but invite them into RAYE’s music, and her mind. An unbreakable, intimate connection between audience and performer flowers, a connection which is all-too rare in the music industry today. “I feel like you’re in my living room,” RAYE jokes at the piano as she takes requests from the audience, “not that you could all fit in my living room.”
In one particularly compelling moment, RAYE performs both “Body Dysmorphia.” and “Ice Cream Man.” tracks which deal with the fluctuating anxiety she has surrounding her body image and her own experiences of sexual harassment. She reaches for the buttons of her white, silver-trim waistcoat and undoes the top button. Then the second. Then the third. She throws the waistcoat over a piano and stands in her white bra. “Fuck it,” she mouths and undoes her trousers, slipping them off to stand proudly in her body. “I hate my body,” she says, “so this is me overcoming that”. The moment doesn’t feel rehearsed, cliched, or the clumsy attempt at promoting body positivity. It instead feels humble and quiet, a small act which resonates powerfully with what is predominantly an audience of young women.
The enchanting show is a harmonious blend of comedy, vocal gymnastics, rapping, dancing, scatting and huge numbers which have an entire venue of people captivated and it is not one the audience will forget anytime soon.
