A generational pop talent: Rina Sawayama, at the O2 Academy Brixton, reviewed

The first time I saw Franz Ferdinand was at the sadly lost Astoria, just after the release of their first album. I’d liked but not loved the record, but that night I experienced the single most exciting thing in live music: artist and audience absolutely united in the conviction that this – the biggest gig of their career so far and by far – was the last time this band would be playing a place this small. Both band and audience – and even the VIP enclosure of the balcony, in front of where I stood – radiated excitement about all of us being in this together: prepare for lift-off, next stop the stars!

Rina Sawayama’s Brixton show was the same febrile, euphoric, shared experience. She strode around the stage as if she were already in an arena, gazing at a point 100ft behind the back wall of the Academy. She and her band came with the trappings of an arena gig, too: with a catwalk and steps, a pair of dancers, plus the four-act structure that’s common with arena pop shows to allow for costume changes and to group songs by mood or theme. It’s testament to Sawayama’s skill that even the third act – often the dreariest part of the show, full of ballads intended to heighten the impact of an all-bangers finale – was dramatic and involving.

Sawayama is a genre magpie. In 90 minutes, we got nu-metal-lite (‘STFU!’), softly orchestrated melancholy (‘Minor Feelings’), chugging new wave (‘Catch Me in the Air’), gossamer summer pop (‘Bad Friend’), windswept power ballads (‘To Be Alive’), four-on-the-floor house (‘Lucid’) and more – so one was rarely more than three minutes away from a change in mood. And her musical choices are so unerring that she can make gold from the base metals of styles that usually leave me cold.