4.5/5
In Rainbows.
For all the big releases this New Music Friday (Diddy, Nas, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Pretenders, Barenaked Ladies), it's Corinne Bailey Rae's formidable fourth album that is the most accomplished and artistic. With her first release since 2016's sweet 'The Heart Speaks In Whispers', Bailey Rae puts a whole new record on with her most profound project since 'The Sea' of 2010 in mourning. This powerhouse of a new album 'Black Rainbows' might just be the biggest and most successful left-turn for an acclaimed artist. One that's about to herald them as so much more. And Corinne was already one of the most underrated eclectic singer/songwriters we have in this generation. 'Black Rainbows' and the stunning summer single 'New York Transit Queen' takes us even further than those 'Paris Nights/New York Mornings'.
Inspired by her witnessing a Black history exhibition by artist Theaster Gates in Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, USA, the winds of change have hit the sails of this catalogue of beautiful, black excellence from the great Brit. Even 'The Love Album' like red and bold type of this album hits the career canvas of Corinne different. Definitively. No longer cocooned despite the cover, Corinne Bailey Rae lies between a gallery of images set to inspire, incite and influence. The art "summoned thoughts about slavery, spirituality, beauty, survival, hope and freedom", is all there in the beautiful struggle of the music. All the way to the cavernous club setting of the 'Transit Queen' video that sets everybody free in the boundless Big Apple. All to the call and response of the sparse, but substance filled, stylistic lyrics. "She takes the 9 to the 5/On the New York subway line/She gets her rides for free/Meet her at the Battery, aah/More, more, more, yeah/Ah, ah, ah, ah." Beauty is well and truly in her possession.
With so many amazing artists making music that moves you right now, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. Yet nothing matters in all its meaning quite like this. Stepping out and over her self-tilted classic debut with bold new defiance, making her discography that much more deluxe. But this album that has even inspired the record label name change of Black Rainbows (along with Thirty Tigers) is about more than all that in all its garage rock fusion with R&B, jazz and stirring social commentary. It's for the people. It's glam. It's punk. It's the wake-up we all need when the world is too busy fighting each other to realize what is right. And that's right here. 'A Spell, A Prayer' meditating, "Finger tip to finger tip (Ah)/Eye to eye (Ah)/Lay your hip against my hip (Ah)/Feet entwined (Ah)/We are here in this moment (Ah)/And forever more." This is the beautiful beginning of a forever music that feels like legend. From the beats of the title-track, to the epic 'Erasure' of the standout song of significance that says it all in a distortion that has never sounded so clear. "They Typex'ed all the black kids out of the picture/So when they pictured that scene, they wouldn't be seen/Baby girl in the front row, with the cornrows/Smiling at the band/They made a cartoon of you/They beat you into lead, and made an object out of you/They put out lit cigarettes down your sweet throat/They fed you to the alligators."
If you didn't know this was coming, you wouldn't believe it was her. You've never heard Corinne Bailey Rae quite like this before. And you'll never hear better, or more bold and beautiful for a long time coming. Just like the engrossing 'Earthlings' in Stardust signature like a Sayaka Murata novel that reveals much more about this wide world we call planet home like Jamiroquai once did. "Do you know, earthlings/You can start again?/Simply press "refresh" to begin again." It's that simple. Subtle, beautiful and profound in this digital age that swipes past what's right there un front of us. Just like the "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" message and Jarvis Cocker song from the pulp of Wes Anderson's UFO fiction 'Asteroid City'. The 'Red Horse' doesn't pale either in all its beauty amongst the brutality of this album's central theme of all the scars the world has left. "Let’s go riding out in the pink light/On a prairie with an endless sky/Let’s get married under the moonlight/Raise a family of wild-eyed childs" Corinne croons on the sweetest reprise that could rest on any of her other big three albums, yet fits perfectly and yearningly right here. "You're the one that I've, I've been waiting for", she sings again and again on the album we've been waiting for when most didn't even know they really needed it.
'He Will Follow You With His Eyes'. And like the Lord's light, we can see it clearly after the rain has gone. In this clever, conceptual track like St. Vincent 'Pills' that plays like a public service announcement or commercial to all the crass ways mass media and corrupt companies try to peddle what they feel real beauty is. Like a Haim 'Man From The Magazine, it all begins so insincerely as they write it. "Ladies, don't you long for love?/Be irresistible!/With the brighter, attractive beauty/Everybody admires", they tell us like it's just so easy for "all those girls in the magazines (that) make it seem so simple". All before the defiant refrain of the beautiful, "I'll be smouldering in my plum red lipstick/My black hair kinking/My black skin gleaming", takes us to a place we can really call home. With heart. And soul stirring as she 'Put(s) It Down' before the beauty of a piano perfect 'Peach Velvet Sky' and the compelling closer, 'Before The Throne Of An Invisible God' has heads rolling in this game. "Before the throne/Before the throne/His train filled the temple/His train filled the temple/Coal to my lips/His train filled the temple/A burning coal to my lips/To my lips/A burning coal to my lips" with Björk beauty over Japanese inspired instrumental moments. "Kneel" to the new queen far from a New York transit, embracing the whole world with a message that ties the beauty and the brutality of this wonderful world still sadly at war, for better or worse, all together. Until, we as a people, are once more again. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'New York Transit Queen', 'Erasure', 'Peach Velvet Sky'.
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