Bree Runway live in London: a genre-smashing spectacle destined for arenas

NME

Before Bree Runway steps on stage at London’s Electric Brixton, a series of VHS-style clips flash up on the huge screen adorning the back of the venue. The visuals include a title card which reads “Bree Runway program loading”, stunning shots of the NME 100-topping artist and a FM radio flicking between channels, eventually culminating with the rousing broadcast: “You are now listening to the sound of Bree Runway.”

This declaration is swiftly followed by the writhing opening guitar lick of ‘APESHIT’, announcing the arrival of the star of tonight’s show. It’s the sort of entrance that you’d expect to see at an arena show, but Runway is already becoming renowned as an artist who treats every venue she plays in like it’s a stadium. Her first headline show in the capital back in September, for instance, took place at the 300-capacity Colours venue in Hoxton, but still resulted in a spectacle which NME described as a “statement of intent from a superstar-in-waiting”.

Six months on, Runway has now sold-out a London venue five times the size of that September gig, and the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton is appropriately treated to Runway’s meticulously curated artistic vision. The Hackney artist, who is joined on stage by her live band and four backing dancers (who run through a series of slickly choreographed routines throughout her set), commands the room with her dramatic, genre-switching sound, and even receives a superstar wind machine moment courtesy of one fan that sees her leather outfit float out behind her.

Runway is, naturally, on charming form. “I wasn’t prepared for this much,” she humbly admits to her enthralled audience before performing her recent Afrobeat-flecked single ‘Pressure’. Later on, she announces something that the crowd already know the answer to: “A Bree Runway show really is a party, right?”

There’s even a taster of new music. “So, there’s this album everybody wants from this girl called Bree Runway,” she begins before launching into ‘Somebody Like You’, an unreleased cut of silky R&B that shows her “lover girl side” – a part of her persona that, Runway explains, she’s not shown in her music yet. The surprises don’t end there, though: there’s even time for a cover of Tame Impala’s ‘Love/Paranoia’, complete with psychedelic visuals and throbbing synths in a fitting tribute to one of her musical heroes, Kevin Parker.

Runway’s live band bolster her ever-changing sound: the ‘00s-inspired ‘ATM’, which sees Runway deliver its first verse a capella to illustrate the track’s lyrical agility, runs into the reggae tones of ‘Rolls Royce’, before the lilting ‘All Night’ thrillingly ends with a stadium-ready guitar solo. By the time the show winds up with the killer ‘Hot Hot’, where Runway is joined on stage by RuPaul’s Drag Race UK alumnus Tayce for a confetti-showered dance routine, we’ve already long come to our conclusion. If this is “the sound of Bree Runway” we were promised at the top of the show, we’re staying locked in for the long-term.

Bree Runway played:

‘Intro: Bree Runway FM / Apeshit’
‘Little Nokia’
‘Pressure’
‘Big Racks’
‘Gucci’
‘Somebody Like You’
‘Love/Paranoia’ (Tame Impala cover)
‘ATM’
‘Rolls Royce’
‘All Night’
‘Hot Hot’

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