“I really feel it’s this bizarre punk, jazz sort of second for me,” Corinne Bailey Rae instructed Stereoboard final yr. It’s not an announcement you would possibly anticipate from a Grammy-winning singer who’s best-known for heat, easy-going neo-soul that soundtracked many a suburban ceremonial dinner within the late ‘00s. What subsequent? Katie Melua dabbling in speed-metal? Norah Jones in corpse paint?
And but right here we’re: ‘Black Rainbows’, Rae’s fourth album, swings from crunching glam-punk to skronking experimental jazz that wouldn’t sound misplaced on David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’. There are left turns, after which there’s this. The Leeds-raised musician’s inventive epiphany occurred on tour in Chicago, the place she visited the Stony Island Arts Financial institution, a centre of Black historical past that honours African-Americans whereas holding the nation’s brutally racist previous to account.
This difficult array of reveals fired Rae’s creativeness. Her new album’s centrepiece, lead single ‘New York Transit Queen’, was impressed by a photograph of Audrey Smaltz, a Black 17-year-old mannequin who gained the Miss New York Transit pageant in 1954. The result’s a superb blast of riot grrrl with sufficient handclaps, guitar squalls and joyously chanted vocals to blow a gap within the 6 Music playlist. We’re a good distance from ‘Put Your Information On’.
On the flipside is ‘Erasure’, a pummelling neo-grunge monitor that sees Rae spit, via distorted vocals, about her disgust on the violence that besets Black youngsters: “They attempt to erase you / They attempt to eviscerate you.” It’s a shocking piece of protest music that places many a full-time punk band to disgrace (which is much less stunning than it appears, on condition that she fronted a teenage riot grrl group with the extraordinarily hardcore title Helen).
Rae initially deliberate to launch this file – her unbiased debut – as a “facet challenge”, however finally discovered the boldness to put ‘Black Rainbows’ front-and-centre. Maybe that’s why the album additionally trades within the accessible sounds with which she made her title – take the beautiful piano ballad ‘Peach Velvet Sky’ and loungey Winehouse pastiche ‘He Will Observe You With His Eyes’. Even the latter, although, segues right into a spooky digital soundscape.
The gear shifts might be jarring, however album 4 is definitely extra cohesive than it has any proper to be, a reality its creator has attributed to her frequent thread of affect in Stony Island Arts Financial institution. Horns up: Corinne Bailey Rae has thrown the musical curveball of the yr.
Particulars
- Launch date: September 15, 2023
- File label: Black Rainbows Music
