Corinne Bailey Rae’s New Album “The Sea”
Bailey Rae recorded "The Sea" after the sudden 2008 death of her husband, musician Jason Rae, and her grief is on display with the heartbreaking "Are You Here" and "I'd Do It All Again." But maturity, rather than sadness, is the dominant feature of "The Sea," which comes off as an intimate tribute to her husband rather than a grim eulogy.
Rae's debut went on to sell 2 million copies in the U.S., making her one of the biggest new artists to spring from Britain in the last decade. She deepened the prestige by guest-starring on 2008's Album of the Year champ, a tribute to Joni Mitchell called "River," on which Rae moaned the title track.
For her followup, "The Sea," Rae hasn't reeled in her ambition an ounce. But, happily, the rigor of the studio allowed her to find the anchor she needed to ground her most potentially ruinous leaps.
Like Rae's debut, "The Sea" boasts an unusually crisp sound. Its striking opener, "Are You Here," slips just a spare guitar riff under Rae's voice, functioning like a mat on top of which she twists her singing into positions of yoga-like elasticity.
The song addresses a defining, and recent, tragedy in Rae's life. During the time she was making "The Sea," her husband of seven years, Jason Rae, died of a drug overdose. Yet "Are You Here" expresses less mourning than a kind of mystical eros, as if proposing a sexy leap into the afterlife.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.Or follow us on Twitter.
