Rose Gray, Louder, Please
Rose Gray may seem to have come out of nowhere, but the 28-year-old Londoner has been trying to find her place in pop for more than a decade now. Hers is not an uncommon story — that of the very young woman scoring a record deal, being steered in a direction she was unhappy with, and leaving the label unable to take any of her music with her (Gray says she made more than 100 tracks as a teen that the label kept upon her departure).
Ten years later, after a period of hedonism and soul-searching that doubled as inspiration (she worked on the door at Fabric, London’s most renowned nightclub for underground dance music), Gray is chasing two EPs released in 2022 and 2023 with her debut album, Louder, Please. It’s made up of 12 contemporary-sounding club/pop tracks that nod to earlier eras of dance music, brimming with sounds and ideas that land with varying degrees of success.
Singer Rose Gray.
The album’s opener Damn could be easily mistaken for a Fcukers track. The NYC electronic band led the indie sleaze renaissance in 2024, built around the same seductively whispered vocals, grungy drums and punkish insouciance that makes Damn so appealing. It’s followed, jarringly, by Free, a euphoric, festival-ready dance cut produced by Zhone, who has worked with Troye Sivan and Charli XCX. The sparkling synth line running underneath Gray’s vocal in the verse is alluring, but the bombastic bass stabs in the chorus are as uninspired as the lyrics. “Take a look around, tell me what you see/’Cause the good shit in life is always free,” she sings.
Across the album, Gray changes moods and personalities on each track — the effect of working with a bunch of different producers and writers, but also, a symptom of Gray’s magpie-like approach to creating music. Free is a generic nod to Swedish pop auteur Robyn; Party People steals its progressive house beats from EDM giant Deadmau5, and Angel of Satisfaction is an obvious Lady Gaga rip. That’s not to say these tracks are bad — Gray has a lovely, agreeable voice that shape shifts effortlessly, and top-shelf producers including Justin Tranter, who has written for Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez; and Alex Metric, house music hitmaker, ensure that everything is in good taste. But Gray’s attempts to channel her influences results in imitation rather than invention, and in what feels like a collection of singles rather than an album.
Tectonic, produced by Metric and Alex Milton, is a trancey, romantic, radio-friendly ballad. Wet and Wild is an acid house throwback with bright piano lines and an anthemic chorus. The bouncy Switch suggests you “push and pull positions” to keep things spicy, while on Everything Changes, a wistful Gray promises her partner she’ll remain steadfast as their careers evolve and parties begin to lose their sheen.
Rose Gray’s new album Louder, Please.
Hackney Wick is the album standout, a spoken word recollection of a London night out that crescendos over a bed of soaring strings and delicate hand claps. It’s yet another example of Gray’s versatility, something that the album demonstrates almost to her detriment. The effect is of a talented singer and songwriter trying on and looking good in a bunch of outfits, without making any of them her own.
One gets the sense that Gray was impatient to release this record, and you couldn’t blame her, having missed her chance to get started a decade ago. But despite sounding as polished and shiny as a factory-fresh Lamborghini, on Louder, Please, Gray’s sense of self is yet to come into focus.
