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Sometimes an album is immediate, its themes and motives obvious the first time you hit play. Others are more elusive. Irish dance don Róisín Murphy’s last record, 2020’s ‘Róisín Machine’, fell into the former camp. A pandemic-defying collection of joyful disco belters crafted with Sheffield’s DJ Parrot, it landed amid an unlikely revival of the ‘70s genre and shimmied to Number 14 in the UK album chart, becoming her high-charting solo album yet. Its follow-up ‘Hit Parade’, however, is an altogether more slippery affair.
However, the album arrives under a cloud of controversy, with Murphy criticised online in recent weeks for comments about the trans community and her opposition to puberty blockers. The stance felt particularly bruising for the queer core of her fanbase, and at odds with her previous unwavering support of the community. “I should’ve known that I was stepping out of line,” she said in response. “For those of you who are leaving me, or have already left, I understand, I really do, but please know I have loved every one of you.” It has since been reported that her label Ninja Tune are set to continue with the album’s release while not actively promoting it.
Like its predecessor, ‘Hit Parade’ emerged from a long-running team-up with an acclaimed underground producer – in this case, German techno wizard DJ Koze. Murphy recorded a couple of tracks for his excellently eccentric 2018 album ‘Knock Knock’ and, perhaps unsurprisingly, considering her own oddball musical tendencies, found a kindred spirit. We’re talking, after all, about the woman who left chart-botherers Moloko to make her 2005 solo debut ‘Ruby Blue’, a supremely weird concoction of crank-jazz and flatulent beats that reportedly featured ‘brass mice’ (us neither).
Album six isn’t quite that weird – indeed, its tongue-in-cheek title is derived from Koze’s jokey promise that he would take Murphy to the top of the ‘Hit Parade’ – but does operate via its own interior logic, as is perhaps fitting of a record that was pieced together remotely over a number of years. On the one hand, this is accessible alt-pop that drifts from gorgeous, featherweight soul (early single ‘CooCool’) to intoxicating dancefloor euphoria (‘Free Will’) and crackly electro balladry (‘The Universe’).
On the other, it’s punctuated by in-joke skits such as ‘Crazy Ants Surprise’, which sees Murphy play a disco-damaged party monster: “We wanted a certain DJ and the DJ wasn’t there and we were, like, ‘Oh, this is not what we were, like, signed up for…?’” This complex puzzle of a record is also studded with subtle allusions to mortality, a motif Murphy has said was influenced by her late father, who sadly died from Parkinson’s Disease after it was completed.
That emotionally charged theme comes to the fore with standout track ‘Fader’, a truly transcendent big beat weepie on which Murphy recounts the defiant mantra: “Off to meet my maker / When I’m good and ready”. It’s a line that perhaps holds the key to ‘Hit Parade’, a playful record imbued with a sense of mystery and occasional glimpses of autobiography, slowly revealing itself as the cracked mirror image of ‘Róisín Machine’’s bruised optimism.
Kacey Musgraves has cast a spell across London’s Roundhouse. Dry ice shrouds the Texan artist and her 8-piece band in a hazy mist, the lighting dramatic – at times it evokes the break of dawn, others a thunderous rainstorm. And at the eye of this hurricane is Musgraves, her luminous vocals shining as brightly as the disco ball that’s illuminated during a rousing rendition of ‘Anime Eyes’. With the audience — who obey requests to be in the moment and not just view the gig through a lens — enraptured, the ethereal magic of the live show threads throughout.
Tonight’s gig is part of the ‘Deeper Well World Tour’, the shows accompanying Musgraves’ sixth studio album released earlier this year. It’s a record that saw her “navigating new beginnings”, as she said about its titular track: “Sometimes you reach a crossroads. Winds change direction. What you once felt drawn to doesn’t hold the same allure. You get blown off course but eventually find your footing and forage for new inspiration, new insight and deeper love somewhere else”. Or, as she more succinctly reflects in its chorus: “And I’ve got to take care of myself/I found a deeper well”.
This live setting, with the lush arrangements delivered by Musgraves’ double-denim clad band, is where the songs shine, the resilience and complex emotions they convey shining through. The power of opener ‘Cardinal’ ricochets through the venue accompanied by fleshed out instrumentals, while the lilting ‘The Architect’’s quietly questioning lyrics resonate in their subtle accompaniment.
Tracks that faded into the background on ‘Deeper Well’ at times work better here, too. ‘Jade Green’ is taken from a subdued slow burn into a thundering storm, Musgraves swathed in lights of the titular colour, strobes evoking lightning and crashes of percussion closing out the song, before the chaos subsides into a musical ‘Rainbow’. ‘Lonely Millionaire’, meanwhile, is elevated in this setting, the slinky track coming with mass sing-a-longs.
Yet for all the mysticism and magic when the music is playing, in-between songs Musgraves charms in a very different way. Her breezy wit juxtaposed with gut-wrenching music reminiscent of fellow on-stage entertainers Adele or Lewis Capaldi. As the band gear up for a quieter point in the set and huddle in closer at the front of the stage, Musgraves delights the audience with her tight-5 about the food poisoning and stomach upset she started the tour with, which soon spread around her touring party like wildfire. How did we get onto this story? An audience heckle that sounded a bit like a Spice Girl prompting Musgraves to reveal “I met Sporty the other day and almost shat myself! Speaking of…”
That’s not to say this humour isn’t also evident in Musgraves music — the excellent couplet “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore/You don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor-rible person” is sung with gusto by the crowd, in a stripped back rendition of ‘Follow Your Arrow’ (a cut from Musgraves’ debut studio record ‘Same Trailer Different Park’). And there’s rousing renditions of the jubilant kiss-off ‘High Horse’, and the eye-roll at an insecure ex on ‘Breadwinner’.
As she closes with a cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ‘Three Little Birds’ and a short snippet of ‘Easier Said’, Musgraves tells the audience: “I hope your well has been deepened”. With the spell-binding communal magic of being in the moment and Musgraves’ powerhouse performance, we don’t doubt they have.
Kacey Musgraves played:
‘Cardinal’
‘Moving Out’
‘Deeper Well’
‘Sway’
‘Too Good to Be True’
‘Butterflies’
‘Happy & Sad’
‘Lonely Weekend’
‘Lonely Millionaire’
‘Follow Your Arrow’
‘The Architect’
‘Nothing to Be Scared Of’
‘Heaven Is’
‘Jade Green’
‘Rainbow’
‘Golden Hour’
‘Anime Eyes’
‘Don’t Do Me Good’
‘Justified’
‘Breadwinner’
‘High Horse’
‘Slow Burn’
‘Three Little Birds’ (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)
‘Easier Said’
