Artist: Rae, Corinne Bailey
Label: Virgin Records
Released: 2010
Length: 42:49
Rating: 4/5
The second studio album from Leeds-born British musician Corinne Bailey Rae is not the record you’d expect. You can feel above all that in the period before it took shape, the singer lost her life partner Jason Rae, who reportedly died officially from a drug overdose.
With her tender, fragile, almost girlishly innocent voice, she still keeps that feeling of a hard-to-win, forever-suffering woman’s heart, one that in its energy easily finds parallels in singers like Nina Simone (check out the track I Would Like To Call It Beauty) or Joni Mitchell. Corinne’s distinctive voice and singing style are a royal flush she was dealt in the cradle, and she backs up that talent convincingly throughout, with finesse and passion. She seems to get out of every tricky situation, however puzzling, working the structures of her chosen motifs and skillfully turning every spot to her own advantage.
The varied, dynamically arranged set of 11 new songs offers a bit of everything. This is an album that unmistakably belongs to the crowded world of mainstream music, the kind that’s always easy on the ears, yet with rich experience and know-how it successfully fends off the attacks of anyone looking for a stumbling block. So it doesn’t force its way into the mainstream at any cost. It gives priority to Corinne’s artistic idiom, letting her express her own one-of-a-kind identity. And that’s the point.
Even though the smooth jazz polish is applied in just the right dose and the accompaniment of naturally sounding sonic collages from the horn and string sections is often trivially predictable, it’s the singer’s vocal approach that, on “The Sea” too, decisively pulls the material out of the gray of mediocrity.
The album opens with Are You Here through a “lazy” yet natural strum of acoustic guitar, brushes licking the drums and, of course, a dangerously contagious female voice at the center. Entirely unobtrusive and restrained. Compared with it, the song Paris Nights/New York Mornings, built on a similar arrangement, is much more successful in the hunt for a hit, with its craftily seductive melodic refrain. The same goes for I’d Do It All Again, second on the album. With a melodically much more pronounced and compact chorus, it puts itself among the album’s hit candidates. But as we mentioned, this is an album of mourning for a lost person. Songs like Closer or Love’s on Its Way carry a touch of unpredictability. In moments like these Corinne is especially convincing when she leans on the expressive power of her soul vocal improvisations.
There are songs with a rock accent too! Paper Dolls and The Blackest Lilly carry a real bluesy rock embellishment, the latter even a thoroughly cranked-up solo flourish in the middle instrumental section.. Of course, all of this is properly balanced within the basic arrangement framework of the soul-leaning songs. These are the lighter numbers, and Closer gets along with them well on the album too, accompanied by a gentle, funk-tinged rhythmic accent. Moments like these successfully break up the danger of the album peaking, through drawn-out, subtler passages that emphasize a drama vibe it makes no attempt to hide, in a heap of pathetically sobbing moaning.
The production is top-notch. It achieves a clear placement of the individual building blocks of the sound picture and thus optimally fills out the spectrum of that same picture. It also emphasizes the liveliness of the naturally chosen blends of sonic collages, while at the same time making sure the recognizable character of lead vocalist Corinne’s voice convincingly brings the desired moods to life (the emotions are alive) across the album’s individual tracks.
“The Sea” offers a glimpse of Corinne Bailey Rae’s artistic growth. It has a fitting measure of blackness soaked in the sweet seduction of her voice, and a lot of the overall sense of seriousness and artistic maturity that “The Sea” reflects comes from the melancholic design of the lead melodies in the songs. Where blues and jazz join hands, you’ll hardly run into any special joy. It’s an album with no cheerful bounce, no emotional carefreeness, and it doesn’t push hits to the top of the commercial success charts the way her debut did. It’s far more subtle and creeps under your skin later. But once it does, you’ll float freely, buried in a sea of emotions whose authenticity rarely leaves anyone indifferent. Given the rich content it offers, it’s fair to expect an artistic step up on Corinne Bailey Rae’s future studio efforts too.
Lineup
Corinne Bailey Rae – vocals, backing vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards, bass guitar, percussion
Steve Chrisanthou – organ, guitar, horn, percussion
Paul Herman – guitar, rhythm patterns
Paul Siddal – keyboards
Rod Bowkett – bass guitar, acoustic guitar
John Beck – keyboards
Joe Tatton – Hammond
Cara Robinson – backing vocals
Jason Rae – alto saxophone
Jim Corry – tenor saxophone
Malcolm Strachan – trumpet
Sam Dixon – bass guitar
Audrey Nunn – bass guitar
Jess Bailey – Hammond, Wurlitzer piano
Justin Broad – rhythm patterns
Kenny Higgins – bass guitar
Steve Bush – bass guitar, electric guitar
Andy Platts – guitar
Pete Lewinson – drums
Kenji Jammer – guitar
Colin Waterman – drums
Paul McKendrick – backing vocals
Livingston Brown – bass guitar
Tommy D. – keyboards, rhythm patterns
Steve Brown – piano, synthesizer, backing vocals
Mikey Lawerson – drums, percussion
John Ellis – backing vocals
Production
Steve Brown, Steve Chrisanthou & Corinne Bailey Rae
Tracklist
1. Are You Here
2. I’d Do It All Again
3. Feels Like the First Time
4. The Blackest Lily
5. Closer
6. Love’s on Its Way
7. I Would Like to Call It Beauty
8. Paris Nights/New York Mornings
9. Paper Dolls
10. Diving for Hearts
11. The Sea
