A FOGHORN WITH A HEART: HAS RINA’S TIME COME?
Rina Sawayama is a rising star, albeit one moving at an unusually measured pace. She’s been tipped for the top ever since 2017, and even that was four years after the release of her first single.
Her debut album had the misfortune to land in the first lockdown, though the fates did hand her a consolation prize. Her signature tune, Chosen Family, was championed by Elton John, who sang it with her on The Lockdown Sessions, his chart-topping set of Zoom duets.
Only now, at 32, is Sawayama getting a proper crack at the big time. Which may be good news for her sanity if, as Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys has argued, famous people get stuck at the age they were when they first had to deal with fame.
That first album was a critical hit but may have been too much of a mish-mash for the public, being a bold attempt to merge arena rock with R’n’B and nu-metal. For most of the follow-up, Sawayama sticks to her strong point, reeling off big, belting pop-rock anthems about the importance of being yourself.
She has all the tools: the look, the chutzpah, the glimmer of irony and especially the voice, a foghorn with a heart.
If you miss the young Lady Gaga, she’s back, disguised as a Japanese-born, Cambridgeeducated Englishwoman.
If you miss the young Celine Dion, you’ll find someone like her showing up on the slower songs, all lungs blazing.
Those who buy Hold The Girl on vinyl will enjoy side one so much that they may never turn it over. And they could regret it if they did. Sawayama has made an album of ten bangers and three duffers, which all come in a rush, much like our recent Prime Ministers.
She saves the day with her finale, a power ballad called
To Be Alive. It’s so shiny and showbizzy that when Elton hears it he may have to write another musical, just so it can be the closing tear-jerker.
The other album of the week is the solo debut from Marcus Mumford, lead singer of Mumford & Sons. It deals with the heaviest of subjects: being sexually abused as a child. It’s a misery memoir set to music. The words are very well done. Mumford lays out all his feelings, from disgust to something more complicated.
‘I can still taste you, and it kills me,’ he sings, ‘that there’s still some sick part of it that thrills me.’ This is fearless stuff.
The music, understandably, is more mixed. It comes in two modes: Mumford’s familiar shouty folk, which feels incongruous, and wintry ballads, which work better.
Only Child is a beauty, bleak as hell yet still uplifting.