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Last year, Róisín Murphy made headlines she would have preferred to avoid. During a private chat with friends on Facebook, the Irish singer made comments opposing the prescribing of puberty blockers to preadolescent “little mixed-up kids”. When her views were leaked, they triggered noisy outrage from some in the LGBT+ community.
Her record label stopped promoting her new album, Hit Parade, and her future looked in jeopardy. But the record’s strong sales and this huge, sold-out London gig suggest that the controversy has not dented the popularity of Murphy, a longtime LGBT+ ally.
Murphy’s forte is quirky, contrary art-pop melded with pulsing, cutting-edge dancefloor beats. It’s a style she has honed near to perfection, first in house-pop duo Moloko and then over the course of her 20-year, six-album solo career, and this latest extravaganza was a meticulously conceived, beautifully presented arena pop show.
She is also a fiend for the dressing-up box. Backed by a five-piece band, Murphy arrived in a voluminous, shaggy black wig and black fake-fur coat that left her resembling a rogue member of Mötley Crüe. By the time she swooped into the hypnotic, engagingly skew-whiff “Simulation”, two songs later, she was sporting a top hat at a rakish angle.
The endearingly idiosyncratic Murphy is a compelling performer. Despite her music’s immaculate stylings, she made no attempt to project glacial cool. Instead, she threw herself around with glorious abandon to the throbbing rave beats, looking in danger of doing herself a serious mischief as she headbanged to “Overpowered”.
Her music has dance at its core but is essentially an amalgam of house, disco, soul and glam rock. As she slinked through recent single “CooCool”, it wasn’t just the fact that she had donned a raspberry beret and was cooing like a dove that put you in mind of Prince’s sex-funk (although, obviously, those factors did contribute).
The sumptuous electro-soul of another new song, “The Universe”, saw Murphy down in the pit, singing while receiving frenzied hugs from an adoring front row. By contrast, in “You Knew” she pondered desire, vulnerability and love gone wrong over classic acid house beats, as if lost in a profound reverie at the heart of a frantic dancefloor.
Indeed, tonight often resembled a big old-school rave but with a charismatic, look-at-me pop star at its core. This was especially true when Murphy delved into her Moloko back catalogue, revisiting the sleek dance-pop of 1999’s “Sing It Back”, a perennial club staple on Ibiza, the party island she has long called home.
Not even Murphy could maintain this lustrous brilliance all night. A couple of the later tunes dragged, hinting that, occasionally, less could be more. This was a minor quibble. After an encore that saw her, by now shimmering in sequins, doing both Tiller Girls high-kicks and press-ups, you left suspecting that whatever gig you see next will be a visual let-down.
★★★★☆
