Rachel Chinouriri – ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ review: pure indie-pop escapism

30 April, 2024

Rachel Chinouriri (2024), photo by Elliot Hensford

When Rachel Chinouriri first teased her debut LP last September, she made a statement that outlined her emotional state at the time. “This is so scary, but so exciting… What do you call this feeling?,” she wrote, presumably provoked by the six year-long journey to ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’. Its 14 songs reflect what it means to rebuild yourself from scratch: here is an artist who has encouraged herself to do better, and stop believing that she’s still trapped in the past. Or, as she puts it on the uptempo coo of ‘All I Ever Asked’: “Nothing compares to the trouble that I’ve been through.”

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Born in Croydon to Zimbabwean émigré parents, the 25-year-old has said that making music has allowed her to reclaim her place in the indie scene, having been bullied at school due to her race and mislabelled as an ‘R&B artist’ in her early career. These billowing, guitar-driven odes to home and past relationships recall Samia at her most reflective or a more low-key Indigo De Souza, and are about “trying to understand the things that caused me so much trauma,” as Chinouriri recently told NME.

Though this jubilee comes with an air of self-assuredness: even as Chinouriri sings of nauseatingly awkward romantic blunders (‘Dumb Bitch Juice’) or disillusionment (‘The Hills’), the music is characterised by the way it flirts with intrepid drums and falsetto moments, often belying the ache at its core. Armed with a lush and tender vocal, she is an ideal narrator for stories that centre around what it takes to gain a more mature, wizened perspective.

Though rather than sounding bleak, you can hear through these songs that Chinouriri’s healing process is underway. She can galvanise her voice with humour and steel: there are echoes of a similarly straight-talking Lola Young on ‘It Is What It Is’, a track buoyed by a chirpy, girlish pop hook that feels aeons away from the ambient mood of 2021’s ‘Four° In Winter’ EP. ‘Never Need Me’ tingles with wonder, capturing a newfound sense of self through racing guitars that leave you swooning on first listen.

An acoustic version of the already muted and bittersweet ‘So My Darling’ – with the original having been released in 2018 – closes things out. Yet against new material that showcases Chinouriri’s revitalised vision, it feels stuck in the past; the gap between this melancholic confessional and the zingy songs elsewhere is noticeably stark.

As a portrait of a life (and career) transformed, however, ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ – despite its slightly macabre title – is consistently charming, while offering enough range in sound and scope to hint at Chinouriri’s future ambitions. She has worked hard to make it sound this easy.