Rescheduled date is Friday 19th April 2024, all original tickets remain valid.
Sometimes the only way through the band times is to boogie ‘til dawn and Rianne Downey’s latest single, Dancing In The Rain, marks the memory of lost love by celebrating youthful abandon, urging on fresh hope and wrapping herself up in heady beats of dancefloor-ready pop. The pounding confessional from the reflective future star comes ahead of the release of her third EP, Method To My Madness, on Fri 9 June 2023 and a summer of hotly-anticipated live dates including her just-announced debut appearance at Glastonbury.
Revealing that a new collection of songs was ready to go with the equally ambitious Songbird in March, Downey’s journey through the highs, lows and in-betweens of twenty-something life continue to leave indelible marks in her notebooks. Without wasting a second of her own romantic traumas and tussles with self-doubt and documenting the seemingly inevitable victories that her art, pride and belief achieve over any obstacle thrown in her way, the Method To My Madness EP pledges to be courageously autobiographical yet a gift to anyone experiencing the same.
Blinking into the sun once the clouds have parted, Dancing In The Rain comes as an anthem to recovery, putting aside the hurt for at least the length of a full-blooded, radio-ready bop. Having navigated the sultry crossovers between country, indie and folk in her self-starting music career to date, the chance to truly let go and grasp the possibilities of pop have proved too good an opportunity to miss.
Downey says: “Dancing In The Rain encapsulates that brief moment between a relationship ending and something new beginning and the conflicting baggage that comes with it: guilt, heartbreak, hope, emancipation. Musically, think of a festival in British summertime: grey clouds are circling above, but the sun begins to emerge. It’s the last-chance dance, snatching joy in the face of adversity.”
At the same time as releasing the four-track Method To My Madness, Downey compiles her brand-new music with long sold-out, 2021 Fuel To The Flame EP and this year’s Come What May EP to release a full-to-bursting 12-track compilation on CD and digital formats. A truncated, 9-track vinyl edition, released exclusively with Blood Records, sold out within days of being announced two months ago.
Having opened her 2023 festival account at Liverpool’s city-centre-wide Sound City and The Great Escape in Brighton earlier this month, Downey looks ahead to her debut appearance at this year’s Glastonbury Festival with unconcealed joy. Announced to take to the Leftfield Stage, she will appear at Worthy Farm on Sat 24 June.
Feeding off the energy provided to her by support slots on major stages with peers Liam Fray, The Lathums and The Snuts, Downey hit new highs early in 2023 with the releases of step-up singles, Alright and Hard winning both BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music support. Her sound, both in the studio and on stage, has been emboldened by the experience, individual support and creativity of not only producer, Rich Turvey (The Coral, Blossoms, Courteeners) but also her band, comprising Liverpool-based musicians, Nathaniel Laurence (guitars), Phil Murphy (drums) and Sam Topping (bass).
