Of all the model-to-musician pivots (Naomi Campbell’s half-decent 1995 R&B LP Babywoman; Kate Moss’ spidery guest vocal with then-boyfriend Pete Doherty’s band Babyshambles; Tyra Banks’ truly terrible Disney theme song Be A Star), the idea that Cara Delevingne might secretly harbour dreams of pop/rock stardom makes more sense than most.
Since her beginnings, stomping the runway for Burberry, Chanel and more as a teen, Delevingne has cultivated an image that’s a little more wildcard, a little less predictable than many of her aloof peers. At the Met Gala in 2017, she shaved her hair off and painted her bald head silver. In the mid-2010s she was in an 18 month relationship with alt-world hero and guitar virtuoso St. Vincent. When Delevingne began teasing a new project to her 38 million Instagram followers with the almost pop-metal drop of debut single I Forgot, it became immediately clear that the now-33-year-old wasn’t aiming for a classic mainstream trajectory but something undeniably weirder.
Having played her first ever festival show at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound at the weekend (the perks of an already-famous name), Delevingne is back on home turf tonight for the second of two debut London shows. She might have switched up her medium, but the crowd that populates Waterloo’s pop-up railway arch venue 26 Leake Street have clearly been lured by her established credentials. In the blue-lit, smoke machine-blasted live room, a mix of quirky influencer types, a few excited young girls and a hefty whack of celebrity peers (Lola Young, Little Simz, Paris Paloma) all turn the space into a sort of off-grid London Fashion Week party, only with a louder soundtrack.
And boy, is it loud. If Delevingne’s teaser visuals - all atmospheric blue lighting and shadowy, ghostly imagery - suggested an unsurprisingly strong focus on the visual side of the operation, then tonight she’s translated this distorted world into an extreme reality. She enters into a thick cloud of smoke, sporting a white vest with straight jacket-style braces, wind machine perma-whipping her hair with a phone torch lighting her face. When the opening track drops into a bass-heavy crescendo, the volume is punishing as Delevingne performs some slightly GCSE drama phone choreography, pointing the camera at herself whilst delivering lines about how “the show must go on”.
Sober since late 2022, a lot of the songs she performs in tonight’s 40 minute set wrangle explicitly with ideas of identity. “Am I actually here? Close my eyes and I disappear,” goes the glitchy, industrial hyperpop of Out of My Head. “This person I see in the mirror, I don’t know her,” intones the clipped synths of Not Normal. “This is a look into the internal conflict we all go through, especially in my time of sobriety,” declares Delevingne of the collection midway through the set. “Performing this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
She’s clearly spent time working out the often harsh yet pop-spiked palette she wants to work in. Flanked in the perpetual near-darkness by two musicians largely only visible by the mildly-amusing head torches that bop up and down in the smoke, Delevingne has - as you would expect - got a strong physical presence. But there remains a tentativeness to some of the vocals, and the sense of someone still finding their voice. You can throw all the resources and fame at a project, but if you’ve only ever played four gigs, you’ve only ever played four gigs.
In Delevigne’s case, it comes across as an overly demonstrative way of presenting her lyrical strife that jars with the harsh sounds whipping up around her. On Not Normal, she veers from Disney sweetness to a strange kind of gruff gung-ho character voice, like someone trying to be both Belle and the Beast. Another song finds her listing “attack me, defend me, take what you want and run for your life” with such perfectly clipped pronunciation it’s like Mary Poppins fronting Crystal Castles.
Far better are the more overtly pop-leaning tracks that dial back the intensity and allow a little more playfulness to poke through. One track runs on the sort of silly, fun synth hook that makes you want to check outside and see if the Vengabus has rolled back into town, while closing song Crazy, Baby packs the sort of ebullient romantic punch that Carly Rae Jepsen has made an entire career of. It’s a mixed bag. “This is a group of songs I’ve been working on for three or four years and want to advise you there’s something for everyone,” she notes diplomatically of the show’s setlist.
Despite her credentials, Delevingne is a new artist finding her feet. She needs to perform more, find her honest voice, feel it out - but there’s potential here.
