Haunting, sobering, euphoric, inspired: these are some of the words that could be, and in fact are going to be, used to describe the performance put on by Raury on 16 February 2016 at the Oxford Art Factory.
Touring the world for his latest album “All We Need” and supporting A$AP Rocky for a bunch of shows across Australia and New Zealand throughout February, this young artist has his work seriously cut out for him for the start of 2016. But this didn’t stop him from delivering an incredible show, and pausing to have a chat afterwards.
In an intimate venue with only around four hundred other fans, the atmosphere was pensive and lightly charged while we waited for the show to start. Supporting act Joy warmed the crowd up perfectly, proving that she is likely one of the next artists to be keeping a close eye on.
Raury opened the show with his title track “All We Need”, gracing the stage with his band in a completely understated fashion wearing a loose, white top and plain pants. It was all he needed. The sounds coming from the speakers in combination with his extraordinary energy were what defined the whole act.
Strobe lighting and a smoke machine were among the only effects used throughout the performance. The flashes of light hitting the fog induced a disorientation that purposefully and dramatically complemented the themes of societal discourse and environmental destruction explored in a lot of his music. A projector screen in the background displayed hypnotic images of moving water droplets and abstract representations of desolate landscapes. At times I could barely see what was happening and felt blinded by the lights; a little bit like humanities blindness to the state of the world perhaps? If this was the affect that he was hoping for, he certainly achieved it.
Before leaping into the performance of “Cigarette Song”, he cheekily dedicated it to an elusive lover. Listen to lyrics and you will understand. Lighting up a cigarette mid-way through the song and sharing it with one lucky member of the audience had the whole place in a stir. It may have been the only time ever that the lighting of a smoke was accompanied by loud cheers and laughter.
There were some more sombre shout-outs throughout the night, however, as he spoke of his ex flame and his heartache for her. After the show, he revealed to me that he had split from his girlfriend in November 2015 and was still rocked by it. He said,
“I’m heartbroken from a break up. It was back in November though. A lot of what I’ve done lately has been about that.”
A Facebook status update on 17 February 2016 stating, “Any girl that’s had my heart is truly something special ?. I hope they never forget that”, is more evidence of the artists struggle with real life issues. At the end of the day, he is a nineteen-year-old man experiencing feelings just like the rest of us.
Despite Raury’s passion for bringing to the forefront the flaws of our modern society through the use of his music, there was plenty of playful excitement evoked in the crowd by the man himself. Demanding that we “Go wild. No, really go wild!” during the beat-drops in “Trap Tears” and “Devil’s Whisper”, he threw water into the crowd, hitting me square in the eye twice and thrilling revelers. I should have felt honored, however my smudged eye make-up was a cause for concern for my impending photo-op with the artist!
Closing the show with an encore performance of “Devil’s Whisper”, undoubtedly the crowd favorite of the night, the audience left on a high note. Cue my meet and greet opportunity with the artist himself…
Predicting that it was going to be a very stale and media-friendly “Hello, nice to meet you! Thanks for coming to the show”, I couldn’t have been more wrong. We sat in a booth in an unused area of the venue and just chatted like two ordinary people. But the guy had a lot of extraordinary things to say. To say that I felt humbled and in awe in the presence of him would be a sore understatement. There is apparently a lot to learn from someone who only graduated high school just over a year ago.
He began with asking me how I was, how I really was. He said, “Life gets tough sometimes, it’s hard. That’s O.K.” I could tell that he was genuinely struggling with the break up, as he brought it up intermittently. The only advice that I could give in the presence of an idol was that time heals all. I felt like I was fifteen sitting next to such a hugely successful artist with wisdom so far beyond his years.
On touring in Australia, he said,
“I’ve been to Australia four times now, I love it here. There are some places that I go to and I just think, I could come back and live here for a year.”
As our time began to run short (I could tell by all of the band members, managers and friends who started milling around us, waiting to hit the town), he left me with some advice that he said to “take with a grain of salt”;
“This might be terrible advice…[but] if you’ve got a big idea, go for it now, while you’re young. Two of the killers in this life are murder and debt. Don’t get into huge debt for the rest of your life. Just go for your idea. That’s what I did.”
Advice to live by? Well, it worked for him. It was, at the least, a motivational talk that left me feeling inspired to do more, much like the messages in his music. But I also left with the realisation that there are a multitude of layers beneath the media-tailored exterior of the stars that we think know so well. And as for the concert? Five stars out of five. I still can’t stop singing all of his songs in my head.