Corinne Bailey Rae

The Reverend wrote this on thread Rolling US Charts Thread, 2007 on board I Love Music on Mar 22, 2007
Corinne Bailey Rae makes me want to punch people.

So... I like her new album. Quite a bit. Doesn't have anything nearly as insipid as "Put Your Records On". How about you?

I just assumed she is radio2 bore 4eva. Is it actually worth seeking out? Really?

i did too, but the jukebox reviews for her latest single got me checking it out, and it's really good. steely dan comparison was not off tm.

great album. i loved about 2 or 3 songs on the last one but this one is a 100 times better with nothing as twee as some of the last one. that song closer is>>>>>

Lex- if you of all people can mention Steely Dan and something being good in the same post then a) my mind is blown b) wanna explain? c) whuuut? should i actually try Steely Dan again? d) i feel slightly nautious, like the boat has been rocked too much and i'm pretty sea sick in the first place.

i dont hear steely dan on this. and i like steely dan. this CBR album is actually better than the recent sade one.

titchy otm! (speaking of boats being rocked)

Yeah, I never checked out her first album cause all I heard is "Put Your Records On" which is some twee bullshit. But hearing the two singles through the jukebox and liking them both fairly well got me to check her new one out. She seems to be a fairly good songwriter and the production is really sympathetic. I'm sure I'll have more to say when I've listened to it more.

a hoy hoy: c)

like a star was my favourite song from the last one. thats still good imo. im glad shes shed all the insipid tweeisms of a lot of british (female) pop of the last few years. paris nights is also a good one from the new album. usually id hate that kind of ineffective wimpy indie singing but the cutesiness of the chorus sounds real rather than affected which is my main prob with a lot of other bands who do that.

apparently she worked with james poyser and questlove on this new album - i dont have the credits though so dont know which songs they did together. the only thing id change about the album is some of the rockiness can sound a tad generic.

a hoy hoy: c)

― grady "cougar" mellencamp (The Reverend), Sunday, 21 March 2010 09:30 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't want to get all tuomas about this but what?

id do it all again is also amazing.

a hoy hoy: you asked a multiple choice question where the answers were a), b), c) and d), and Rev was giving you an answer

:c)

loved 'like a star' off the debut, but the rest was very safe. new album is great, 'are you here' is really haunted and beautiful.

a hoy hoy: you asked a multiple choice question where the answers were a), b), c) and d), and Rev was giving you an answer

― some dude, Sunday, March 21, 2010 3:10 AM Bookmark

^this

apparently she worked with james poyser and questlove on this new album

ahhh. this makes sense. their mark shows

I like the spooky organ that pops up on a couple songs.

and the unexpected vocoder on "The Blackest Lily"

how is it especially surprising that i like steely dan?! (like, only have a couple of their songs though, keep meaning to get an album or sth.)

LEX. Can you please do a thread where you listen to Steely Dan albums and post your reactions in real time?

Please? For Me?

i dont get the hatred for steely dan

if you like jazz/funk etc its only natural youll end up liking them somewhat

which steely dan album? the songs i have are "peg" and "do it again", both of which are great (the tori amos cover of the latter is incredible though). what hatred for them? i literally have no idea how they're perceived, my image of them in my head is, like, decadent yacht rock. white suits and shit

damn, apparently this woman's husband died while she was working on this album :(

lol early in the morning retardation

Steely Dan are one of the archetypal "awful dad bands we must ritually thank punk for replacing", Lex.

The other week I watched a Breaking Bad episode where the dad/main character is talking rock with his son and he says something like "now Steely Dan, they really were the apex of music sophistication in rock", and everyone at the table rolls their eyes in rueful, indulgent disgust.

I'd try Aja first. It has "Peg" on it.

but punk bands are "awful dad bands" to me, so are steely dan like grandad bands or what

sophistication is a good thing

I'm just reporting the standard line (which is fading, thank god), it's not like I believe it or anything.

youll prob think they sound too old and boring lex.

I thought everyone liked Steely Dan, but it's not as if they're inconsistent with Lex's taste. I sort of think of them as the archetypal Sunday afternoon Balearic beach set band thse days.

Kind of OT, but every time I fall asleep listening to Stars of the Lid, I am always rudely awakened by either "Babylon Sisters" or "Hey Nineteen" (Gaucho comes first on iTunes, mostly because I'm not nuts about Aja).

yeah its not a huge stretch from meanderthals to steely dan is it? that said, i was p surprised to see lex's post

but punk bands are "awful dad bands" to me

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Sunday, March 21, 2010 11:54 AM (4 hours ago)

i have never seen your aesthetic so neatly summarized! kudos.

it's more surprising to me that i'm enjoying c.bailey rae than steely dan tbh!

i have 1x album by each on the d/l tho

woulda said the royal scam is the most fun Steely Dan rec. Aja is a bit stately.

but punk bands are "awful dad bands" to me

so otm. HOOS, thanks for missing the point.

hoos was the drummer for awful, gay, dad, band

woulda said the royal scam is the most fun Steely Dan rec. Aja is a bit stately.

The Royal Scam is a lot less penetrable than Aja IMO - Aja just has these inevitable melodies that just leap out at you very quickly. In some ways The Royal Scam feels like their "difficult" album to me (though I love it obv).

well i picked it up just randomly 2nd hand during a phase when i was listening to Graduation constantly, and the bit from Kid Charlemagne that gets sampled on Champion was kinda my lead in, but its definitely the one with the most colourful sound and stylistically varied?

I also like Gaucho more than Aja

lol @ this turning into a SD thread - I would have recommended katy lied as a good gateway.

I really like this paris nights/new york mornings songs - so the album's good and worth getting, yeah?

The Royal Scam has at least three songs whose hooks/melodies escape me each time I reach for the CD and read the titels.

uh so the corinne bailey rae album is pretty damn great then!

didn't notice til last night but "Do It All Again" gets away with only having the big cathartic chorus once in the whole song. ONCE! and is all the stronger for this.

this album is pretty damn good fyi - she's a great performer, beneath that casual, understated swing she really conveys the little risks she's taking in her vignettes. some really nice lyrical touches too!

you were unnervingly delicate
and i had a weakness for etiquette

(you can tell she totally does, too)

didn't notice til last night but "Do It All Again" gets away with only having the big cathartic chorus once in the whole song. ONCE! and is all the stronger for this.

― wsing pumpkins (The Reverend), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:57 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

^^^THIS

I have "The Blackest Lily" stuck en mi cabeza con frequencia

i could see the lights from the restaurant
i couldn't quite perfect that nonchalance
paris and champagne with one brown sugarcube…

still <3ing this album

the point about this being a better sade album than their own this year so otm

Her new covers EP is pretty good, even if a couple of them are too faithful to be that interesting. The epic take on "Que Sera, Sera" is especially great.

this is wonderful; reminds me of Minnie Ripperton

We talked about Minnie Riperton when I interviewed her in February. Minnie's albums were really *adult, like Corinne's - less about the thrill of the chase, the dating game, than the stuff that follows, the magic of domestic life and a deep, long-lasting relationship.

not *domestic, per se, but written from the perspective of someone whose dilemmas are less 'will you love me tomorrow?' and more 'how will that love feel? how will we make the most of it?' And, tbh, these songs are less about dilemmas than triumphing over them, about hope, in a resolutely un-hokey way.

Yeah this is great. Adult music that isn't boring and/or embarrassing always feels like a blessing.

this record has such incredible dynamics

bonus tracks all extremely essential too btw

its nice, this new album. hearing a badu influence more clearly than before. its much more soul influenced than i expected, which is good. its like shes incrementally increasing the soul-ness each new time she comes out (though i dont remember the last one that well). theres still a certain folkiness to what she does though, that makes me pitch her somewhere between idk, linda lewis, badu, and someone like ayo. i think id like to hear her work with production thats less english pop (ie light, inoffensive), and allows for a bit more 'rust'.

or maybe its just that CBR is a tad too lovely for her own good

(or my good, rather than her own - she seems to be doing just fine)

quite like the shades of XO on stop where you are too.

ok, i should just listen to the thing now.

there's some really boring MOR singer-songwriter shit on here, but some really nice stuff too. it's 1/2 of a very good album.

New album Black Rainbows is out on September 15th:

A Spell, a Prayer [5:26]
Black Rainbows [1:57]
Erasure [2:46]
Earthlings [3:38]
Red Horse [5:42]
New York Transit Queen [1:49]
He Will Follow You With His Eyes [3:45]
Put It Down [8:29]
Peach Velvet Sky [5:50]
Before the Throne of the Invisible God [5:12]

Inspired by the objects and artworks collected by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, the work includes a collection of songs, a book Reflections/Refractions at the Arts Bank photographed by Koto Bolofo, live performances, visuals, lectures, exhibitions, and more.

Wide ranging in it's themes, Black Rainbows' subjects are drawn from encounters with objects in the Arts Bank. Taking us from the rock hewn churches of Ethiopia, to the journeys of Black Pioneers Westward, from Miss New York Transit 1957, to how the sunset appears from Harriet Jacobs' loophole. Black Rainbows explores Black femininity, Spell Work, Inner Space/Outer Space, time collapse and ancestors, the erasure Black childhood and music as a vessel for transcendence.

The first single is "New York Transit Queen". A different sound for her, although I think the We are King sisters are still involved in the album in some capacity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9G8jMeQqWg

The new album is fantastic. It wasn't like I was expecting from the singles. It goes off in a lot of cool unexpected directions.

heard a track on radio 4 that sounded like dry era pj harvey to me.

I think it was called 'erasure'

New record is EXCELLENT

Ooh just listened to it twice and punched the order button

Brilliant album. It’s rare to hear an album that has so much variety both between and within tracks - real edge of your seat listening.

after a few listens this is my new aoty, love how these songs are in constant bloom (aside from the two rock tracks that bristle like the grass on a dead planet)

“put it down” may contain all the music i like the most: abyssal pull of ‘70s funk and soul, vocals and synths spiraling out of strict machine rhythms in ‘80s princeish r&b, uhhh then it almost reluctantly becomes house, and the synths start shuddering like they’ve reached capacity before giving way to a flood of guitar noise. i spend every minute of it yoked to its details, pure bliss

then she follows it up with a laura nyro-style solo-piano-as-escher-staircase thing! god! it rules

cosigning how good this is

I said this to tim but
this alb reminds me of Sault
Not in a bad way. And maybe not in an intentional one either. More like her recombination of genre feels very contemporary in terms of what frequency she’s attuned to, in parallel w what Sault does for a slightly “cooler” (nerdier) record collector fan

and yes 'put it down' was my pick for some kind of beating heart of the album, feels the most substantial / keystone type song

“Put It Down” is amazing, yeah - it reminds me of the most mysterious passages of Beyoncé’s self-titled album but more unmoored, lost in the sea of its own imagining.

I've been waiting from this album by her: a retronuevo thing whose retro sounds nuevo.

Wow, a lot of this really impresses me!

First thing this album reminded me of was/is Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color, which I remain a huge fan of--I admit it's a slightly reductive point to make, but it turns out that Shawn Everett mixed all but the last track on this album (he also mixed that AS album)

Her and S.J. Brown seem to be an interesting production team...

Been playing this a lot this week. I'm glad she's managed to continue her pattern of getting better with each album. I really liked her last one, but this is incredible. Something about the mix of genres reminds me of Mr Twin Sister's S/T.

At certain points I was reminded of St Vincent actually, but the album feels pretty singular, the restlessness of it defies simple characterisation.

xpost to Craig D., S J / Steve Brown is her husband btw

oh wow this is incredible

she could have gotten an entire album just from the sound of any one track here

I love her mastery of different "genre" and how that mastery also seems beside the point

man I saw some teaser for this a few months ago and it sounded good and then I forgot this was coming out, listening now. wow.

will def wind up as one of my favorites of the year

You guys have convinced me - firing it up.

I love this album.

isn't it great? it's really great. It reminds me a bit of Twigs' Magdelene. the only (only) drawback is that New York Transit Queen sounds a bit like ....... Come out and Play by the Offspring.

ooh we are king co-wrote "red horse"

I lost track of them after their first amazing record.

ooh we are king co-wrote "red horse"

They also co-wrote this golden banger and a couple of other gems off her last album, too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZSImxK51e4

"been to the moon" is my personal fav king co-written corinne song

wow this is great!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho7cDTgjY-c

I love the use of Ultravox's "Vienna" in that sequence line.

"peach velvet sky" is a fucking knockout, my word. "earthlings" too, in a very different way

This album loses me completely when it ramps up the experimentation, but I'm enjoying the peace in the opener, Red Horse and the last three tracks.

Those experiments are brief, though.

In the end I think you're right, but I'm holding to Red Horse as the purest moment for a reason, I needed the reassurance. This is my proof.

I like the experimentation

oh wow this is incredible

― ufo, Thursday, September 21, 2023 9:16 AM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm this album is immense! grateful to EOY lists this year for helping me discover stuff I missed during an exceptionally busy fall

weirdly this album reminds me of the quik and kurupt album

lol I hear it

its like, creating cohesion through difference, or something

there's a similar freewheeling vibe yeah