Corinne Bailey Rae at Hiro Ballroom (12/07/09)
Photo: Jon Klemm
ALBUM STREAM: The Sea on AOL Music
Since she broke onto the scene in 2006, Corrine Bailey Rae, has experienced both tremendous highs and extreme lows in her musical career. With hits like “Put Your Records On” and “Like A Star”, her self titled debut quickly brought her minor celebrity and a Grammy award, but all that turned to tragedy in 2008, when she experienced the sudden loss of her husband, Jason Rae, due to an accidental drug overdose. She’s returned to music now though, and back in December 2009 she previewed some songs off of her new record, The Sea, at a couple of intimate gigs at The Hiro Ballroom and Joe’s Pub. The Hiro show was taped for an episode the Artists Den performance series and it’s available now on Hulu, her new album came out on Tuesday (Jan 26), and she just announced a new round of tour dates including a May 3, 2010 show at Webster Hall (Buy Tickets). (She’s also been announced as one of the performers who will be playing the 2010 Lilith Fair tour.)
On her new album, “The Sea,” out Jan. 26 on Capitol and begun before Mr. Rae died, there are “before” moments like “I’d Do It All Again,” a song she’d written after a major fight with her husband; it was about how nothing could ever make her stop loving him. And there are “after” moments like “I Would Like to Call It Beauty,” which she’d written after a late-night phone conversation with her grieving brother-in-law; she’d asked him if he still believed in God.
Yet even the “before” songs have a darker mood, musically. Ms. Rae had decided she wanted a very different sound from the feel-good coffee-shop grooves and breezy soul of her Grammy-nominated 2006 debut, which sold about two million copies in the United States and scored a minor hit with “Put Your Records On.” “I wanted to make a heavier, more aggressive record,” she said.
The album is a major creative leap from her debut. Ms. Rae’s voice is deeper, capable of carrying the weight of this sad album. The music is richer, thick with rock, jazz and soul textures, from the crashing guitars of “Diving Hearts,” to the warm organ of “I’d Do It All Again.” And the lyrics on tracks like “I Would Like to Call It Beauty” are bracingly intimate — love letters written to someone who’ll never to get to read them: “So young for death/We walk in shoes too big/But you play it like a poet/Like you always did.” [NYTimes.com]
More pictures, album artwork, tour dates, set list and video from the Artists Den/Hiro Ballroom show after the jump.
Corinne Bailey Rae 2010 Tour Dates
04/09 – Vancouver, British Columbia – Commodore Ballroom
04/11 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theatre
04/12 – Seattle, WA – Moore Theatre
04/15 – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
04/17 – Indio, CA – Empire Polo Club
04/22 – Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
04/28 – Montreal, Quebec – Club Soda
04/30 – Boston, MA – House of Blues
05/01 – Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
05/03 – New York, NY – Webster Hall
05/11 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage
05/13 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
05/14 – Baltimore, MD – Ram’s Head Live
Corinne Bailey Rae at The Hiro Ballroom (12/07/09)
Corinne Bailey Rae at The Hiro Ballroom
Corinne Bailey Rae Setlist From Hiro Ballroom (12/07/09)
1. Are You Here
2. Paris Nights/ New York Mornings
3. Love’s on its Way
4. Closer
5. Paper Dolls
6. I’d Do It All Again
7. Like A Star
8. The Blackest Lily
9. Little Wing (J. Hendrix)
10. Diving for Hearts
11. I Would Like To Call It Beauty
–Encore–
12. The Sea
13. Put Your Records On
14. Till It Happens To You
15. Paris Nights (Retake)