Rachel Chinouriri - What A Devastating Turn Of Events (First Anniversary Edition) (LP) - White Vinyl

What A Devastating Turn Of Events landed on 3 May 2024 as Rachel Chinouriri’s debut album, and even a year later it still feels fresh, like a set of pages torn straight from a diary and taped to a wall with guitars humming underneath. The title reads like a punchline you tell yourself when the day goes sideways, which fits the record’s blend of frank confession and sly resilience. She has always straddled scenes, a London songwriter with Zimbabwean roots who came up on the indie circuit but got nudged into the algorithmic R&B box early on. This album pushes back with clarity. It is an indie record first: crisp drums, chiming guitars, patient basslines, bright melodies that bend at the edges, and her voice right in the center, conversational and cutting when it needs to be.

Two of the singles set the tone. Never Need Me swings like a door slammed for the last time, a clean break that still catches in the throat. It is hooky, but the hook sits on a blunt truth, which is where Chinouriri is strongest. The Hills chases a different sort of high, all nervous energy and late night motion, the kind of track that makes you quicken your pace on a cold walk home. The title song folds the record’s thesis into one of her gentlest performances, close-mic’d and steady, the kind of singing that makes you lean in. She writes with an eye for moments rather than slogans. A text that should not have been sent. A bus ride where you finally let the tears come. A party where the music is loud enough to hide a crack in your voice. When critics at places like The Guardian and NME praised the album last year, it was not just for strong melodies. It was for the way those small, lived details keep the songs from floating off into the ether.

You can hear a careful band feel across the sequencing. Guitars do most of the talking, sometimes glassy and chorus kissed, sometimes dry and close. Percussion is tidy and purposeful, never cluttering the corners. There are moments when she lets a synth pad widen the room, then pulls it all back to a voice and a single line of picking. That ebb and flow gives the record shape, and it stops the sadder songs from sinking. More than once she pivots from a tender verse into a chorus that feels airlifted from a sunlit festival afternoon, which suits her gift for turning private knots into crowd catharsis.

Chinouriri has said in interviews that she writes as a way to process the mess of coming of age in a city that gives a lot and takes a lot. You can trace that line back to early favorites like So My Darling, and you can hear the same warmth here even when she edges into darker territory. The sequencing is smart, too. The first half is front loaded with instant gratifiers, the back half deepens the palette, and by the final stretch she has earned a couple of quiet songs that feel like late night emails to yourself. It is a debut that understands pacing.

The First Anniversary Edition brings the record back into the conversation without fuss, which is the right move for an album that won fans through patience and word of mouth. If you missed it the first time, this is a great moment to pick up What A Devastating Turn Of Events vinyl and let the whole arc sink in. The pressing sits nicely next to the rest of the Rachel Chinouriri vinyl that has been trickling into shops since those early EPs, and it is the kind of album that rewards a full side A, side B listen. Flip it and the themes echo. Resolve, self respect, a bit of gallows humor, a belief that the right song can carry you through a heavy week.

I found my copy while killing time in a Melbourne record store on a rainy afternoon, the sleeve peeking out in the new arrivals bin. It is one of those purchases that feels obvious the second you hold it. If you buy Rachel Chinouriri records online, you know how fast her releases tend to move. There is a reason for that. She has built trust with listeners who want crisp, modern indie that still remembers to feel human. For anyone building a shelf of Rachel Chinouriri albums on vinyl, this one is the anchor, the point you hand to a friend when they ask where to start. And if you are crate digging far from home, maybe somewhere in the endless sprawl of vinyl records Australia sellers keep turning up, it is the kind of spine you spot from a few feet away and smile. The songs do the rest.