It’s easy to root for Rachel Chinouriri. A Gen-Z London girl, she’s bubbly, sensitive, a bit sardonic and gossipy—though never mean-spirited, even when she’s telling off an ex who’s “a bit of a prick.” Her best songs feel like chatting with your funniest and most emotionally astute friend, and her conversational lyricism is inextricable from the voice delivering it, one that can turn on a dime from soaring falsetto to a sugary lilt to a bluesy croon. Even when she’s iterating on an aggressively of-the-moment theme—she’s got a track titled “Dumb Bitch Juice” and another named after her real-life boyfriend—her effervescent persona transcends increasingly miniscule trend cycles. As a public figure, she’s been outspoken about issues close to her, including engaging in anti-war and pro-Palestinian advocacy and highlighting economic challenges in the music industry. A string of recent career achievements—opening for Sabrina Carpenter, playing a set at the inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival, and appearing as a musical guest on SNL UK—all felt like well-earned feel-good moments.
Chinouriri’s 2024 debut album split the difference between the alt-rock and radio pop of Y2K Britain. Those influences linger on her second record, i think i spoke too soon, and she often gilds them in shiner, synthier sounds as she continues to mine the pitfalls of young womanhood for dramedy. i think i spoke too soon is by far the most polished she’s ever sounded, and this sleek sound mostly complements her natural charisma. Occasionally, though, it pulls focus from the star at the center and feels mismatched with her heart-on-sleeve songwriting.
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A pair of openers—“One song away from crying” and “Pretty Girls”—run a bit too smoothly together and bury Chinouriri’s vocals in arrangements that recall elevator music. (Her SNL UK performance of the former only emphasizes the comparatively flattened sound of its studio version.) But these prove to be outliers as i think i spoke too soon hits its stride. There’s a mini rom-com soundtrack tucked into the record’s center, which lands Chinouriri in the crossfire of arcade bleep-bloops, snare punches, and hazy violin ribbons. The role of the quirky, brash-yet-flustered lover girl comes naturally to Chinouriri. “It’s pure infatuation/a little bit dumb,” she swoons on “Favourite desperation”—an apt summation of a crush and also of how great pop songs work; combined with the thick stacks of buzzy guitar accompanying her description of a Pixies-soundtracked drive, it’s some of Chinouriri’s finest meta-narration. Her zippy addition to pop’s ever-expanding “crying in the club” canon, “Broken chair,” is another highlight; here, she references her debut album’s opener (“she’s throwing up into a garden”) and ponders the costs of public messiness now that she’s living in the limelight.
