More about: Rina Sawayama

“I know that last year was hard,” Rina Sawayama says, standing on stage in the second of four outfits for the night, “but we survived”. The scream that goes up in Electric Brixton is tangible. Everyone here is a survivor in some way or another, even if just of the pandemic, and it is Rina—this ethereal throwback popstar before us—who helped many of us through it.

With her debut album SAWAYAMA, which we named our Album of the Year 2020, Rina delivered something utterly unique: a ‘00s pop record, a metal record, a record for the LBGTQ+ community, a record for the displaced and the generationally traumatised. Live (alongside some choice older cuts), she reasserts its vibrancy, a whole nineteen months after its release. 

Opening with 'Dynasty', Rina immediately asserts herself as a new-old kind of popstar, one who stands in sillhouette as the crowd screams their name. There are stairs incorporated into her precisely-choreographed routines and low-rise trousers are part of all four outfit changes—the '00s called to congratulate.

Perhaps one fewer outfit change would have been preferable considering that the set was already far shorter than any of us hoped, though interludes—including a moving snippet from a Zarah Sultana MP speech—do at least add to the high emotion of the night.

Goosebumps are part and parcel of the Dynasty Tour experience: they erupt as Rina launches straight into 'Dynasty', are present during the high-octane shredding of her guitarist during 'Love Me 4 Me' (and many others) and are joined by tears as Brixton sing 'Chosen Family' so loudly that Rina and her drummer have to take a moment to cry a little too.

As evidenced by the reactionary screams to warm-up songs ‘Call Me Maybe’, ‘Cut To The Feeling’ and ‘Vroom Vroom’, this is very much a pop-loving crowd with a penchant for the sublime. Rina and her all-femme team—two backing dancers, a drummer, a guitarist—validate the taste of 2,000 people tonight. A spectacularly performed set of modern age nostalgia bops, the show closes out with a Britney Spears-dedicated rendition of Lady Gaga's 'Free Woman'. In it, Rina easily aligns herself with pop icons of the past and present.

Rina Sawayama played:

Dynasty
STFU!
Comme Des Garçons (Like The Boys)
Akasaka Sad
Snakeskin
Cyber Stockholm
Paradisin'
Love Me 4 Me
Bad Friend
Who's Gonna Save You Now?
Tokyo Love Hotel
Chosen Family
Cherry
XS
LUCID
Free Woman (Lady Gaga cover)

More about: Rina Sawayama