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Corinne Bailey Rae dynamites her own musical past and embraces a larger historical one on her new album, \u201cBlack Rainbows.\u201d<\/p>\n
With her self-titled 2006 debut, Bailey Rae established herself as an agile, airy-voiced pop songwriter; it reached No. 1 in her home country, Britain. Her big hit single, \u201cPut Your Records On,\u201d<\/a> cheerfully but unmistakably called for celebrating a Black heritage.<\/p>\n Bailey Rae hasn\u2019t rushed her albums. Her second one, \u201cThe Sea\u201d in 2010, dealt with her grief \u2014 at 29 \u2014 at the sudden death of her first husband, the saxophonist Jason Rae; the songs reflected on time, love and sorrow<\/a>. For her 2016 album, \u201cThe Heart Speaks in Whispers,\u201d she followed record-company advice to return to polished pop-soul love songs<\/a>. By then she had married S.J. Brown, who has co-produced \u201cBlack Rainbows\u201d with her.<\/p>\n On \u201cBlack Rainbows,\u201d Bailey Rae boldly jettisons both pop structures and R&B smoothness to consider the scars and triumphs of Black culture. \u201cWe long to arc our arm through history,\u201d she sings in \u201cA Spell, a Prayer,\u201d the album\u2019s opening song. \u201cTo unpick every thread of pain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The songs on \u201cBlack Rainbows\u201d flaunt extremes: noise and delicacy, longing and rage. In some, Bailey Rae reclaims her distant punk-rock past, when she was in a band called Helen. Others summon retro elegance, toy with electronics and move through multiple transformations. In the album\u2019s genre-bending title song, Bailey Rae repeats the words \u201cblack rainbows\u201d over a mechanical beat; her voice gets multiplied into a choir as a labyrinthine, jazz-fusion chord progression gradually unfurls, brimming with saxophone squeals.<\/p>\n The album has a conceptual framework. Most of its songs are inspired by artifacts Bailey Rae saw at the Stony Island Arts Bank<\/a> in Chicago, a former bank building that now holds a huge repository of African and African-diaspora materials gathered by the artist Theaster Gates: art, books, magazines, music and what the arts bank calls \u201cnegrobilia,\u201d everyday objects that perpetuated Black stereotypes. For Bailey Rae, the collection summoned thoughts about slavery, spirituality, beauty, survival, hope and freedom.<\/p>\n An ashtray in the shape of a Black child with an open mouth was a touchstone for \u201cErasure,\u201d a pounding, screeching, distorted rocker about the exploitation of enslaved children; Bailey Rae blurts, \u201cThey took credit for your labor!\u201d and \u201cThey put out lit cigarettes down your sweet throat!\u201d Another, more ebullient rock stomp, \u201cNew York City Transit Queen\u201d<\/a> \u2014 with Bailey Rae overdubbed into a hand-clapping cheerleading squad \u2014 commemorates a cheesecake photograph of Audrey Smaltz, the Black teenager who was named Miss New York Transit in 1954.<\/p>\n That song is followed by a different take on Black beauty: \u201cHe Will Follow You With His Eyes.\u201d Bailey recites what sounds like old advertising copy \u2014 \u201cSoft hair that invites his caress\/Attract! Arouse! Tantalize!\u201d \u2014 over a nostalgic bolero. But partway through the track, she casts off the cosmetics, with an electronic warp to the production and a scornful bite in her voice, as she sings about flaunting, \u201cMy black hair kinking\/My black skin gleaming.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While Bailey Rae allows herself to shout on \u201cBlack Rainbows,\u201d she doesn\u2019t abandon the graceful nuance of her pop past. In the shimmering, billowing \u201cRed Horse,\u201d she envisions romance, marriage and family with a man who \u201ccame riding in\/in the thunderstorm,\u201d cooing, \u201cYou\u2019re the one that I, I\u2019ve been waiting for.\u201d<\/p>\n Bailey Rae shared a Grammy Award \u2014 album of the year \u2014 as a vocalist on Herbie Hancock\u2019s 2007 Joni Mitchell tribute, \u201cRiver: The Joni Letters,\u201d and she welcomes Mitchell\u2019s influence with the leaping, asymmetrical melody lines and enigmatic imagery<\/a> of \u201cPeach Velvet Sky,\u201d<\/a> which has Brown on piano accompanying Bailey Rae in an unadorned duet.<\/p>\n \u201cBlack Rainbows\u201d is one songwriter\u2019s leap into artistic freedom, unconcerned with genre expectations or radio formats. It\u2019s also one more sign that songwriters are strongest when they heed instincts rather than expectations.<\/p>\n Corinne Bailey Rae
\u201cBlack Rainbows\u201d
(Thirty Tigers)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n