Until her life took an entirely unexpected and unwanted lurch into tragedy, Leeds-born singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae seemed the living embodiment of Put Your Records On, the ubiquitous single that made her a household name in 2006. Emerging at the same time as Amy Winehouse, she was the skinny latte to Winehouse's double espresso: zesty, melodic and impeccably well-mannered, her debut album soundtracked wholesome good times rather than the crashing chaos of the early hours.
The death from an accidental overdose of her saxophonist husband Jason Rae in March 2008 has changed all that. The Sea arrives laden with the kind of baggage that it sometimes seems ill-equipped to carry. Bailey Rae has a smoothness in her voice that tends to veer into politeness; unlike Winehouse, who makes a sobbing drama out of every note, she isn't a natural candidate for turning personal devastation into soap opera.
Instead, The Sea ebbs and flows opaquely between pain and hope, loss and regained faith. Although generally steering clear of confession, the songs hit hardest when Bailey Rae fights her innate conservatism and confronts her grief. The opening track, Are You Here, begins with scratchy guitar and a small, vulnerable voice offering a thumbnail sketch of her late husband. Owing far more to Jeff Buckley than any soul siren, it's raw and terribly touching.
I Would Like to Call it Beauty mines the same autobiographical seam, but most other tracks were composed before Jason Rae's death and gain much of their emotional resonance in retrospect. I'd Do it All Again, written after a marital argument, now sounds like a heartbreaking premonition. It's a fantastic song, crawling through jazz-flecked nursery slopes, before climbing to a swooping soul chorus. A tumble of mumbled words set to a ghostly backing that recalls Stevie Wonder's They Won't Go When I Go played by Radiohead, Love's On its Way is similarly affecting.
Yet elsewhere The Sea often fails to grip. The Blackest Lily aimlessly stomps around like a post-op Lenny Kravitz, while Closer is anonymous retro-soul. Things pick up with Paris Nights/ New York Mornings, a fizzing pop gem that recalls her frothy debut, but nowadays Bailey Rae is at her most diverting when swimming through the deep, dark waves of love and loss. The epic Diving for Hearts promises to "keep on diving down, until my love is found", while the title track offers a touching note-to-self: "Don't you stand there wishing life would fade away," she sings, adding softly, "Goodbye paradise."
At moments like these, Bailey Rae succeeds in making music of rare emotional eloquence, but it's a choppy ride: breathtaking beauty abruptly gives way to a disquieting calm; sudden, thrilling squalls are followed by spells where nothing much happens. Like its physical namesake, The Sea is capable of being dull and flat, but at its most winning it provides glimpses of a new horizon shining beyond the riptides of pain and sorrow.
