Corinne Bailey Rae
The Sea
Virgin/EMI. 11 Tracks.
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

I’m ashamed to admit that I kind of dreaded hearing this album.

When Corinne Bailey Rae’s debut dropped in 2006, it landed like sunshine on a murky musical landscape.  Here was a pop-soul chanteuse who eschewed the pungent vulgarity of fellow Brit Amy Winehouse, not to mention the manufactured beats of the Top 40 hitmakers, to focus on upbeat themes and warm, organic arrangements.  And with the smash single “Put Your Records On”—just go ahead, let your hair down!-- she created an enduring balm for the blues.

Rae was at work on her much-anticipated follow-up when the unimaginable happened.   In the spring of 2008, her husband, Jason Rae, suffered a fatal overdose after sampling a friend’s methadone prescription. In recent interviews, Rae has said that the tragedy left her devastated and doubtful that she’d ever record again.  She eventually mustered the strength to finish the new album, a superhuman feat that warrants the admiration of fans and detractors alike.  (Some critics carped that the debut lacked depth.) However, the release of The Sea raised questions: How would Rae’s loss affect her songs?  And could her fans, including this one, an avid avoider of harsh reality, bear to listen to them?

The Sea’s cover art offers clues to the mood within.  Rae lies on a forest floor, looking nearly catatonic, her wedding band gleaming on her hand in the foreground.  A dense canopy of trees above her darkens the scene.  Yet there are patches of blue sky peeking through the branches, just as there are bright spots among the album’s 11 tracks.  

Make no mistake, The Sea is often achingly poignant, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the sweetness of the first album.  The good news is this sophomore effort is lovely, mature and occasionally brilliant.  The innocent we heard on the debut may be gone forever, but in her place stands a compelling survivor who’s now equipped to convey a wider range of emotions.

The Sea begins with Rae in a state of shock.  “Are You Here,” written in the months following Jason’s death, addresses a ghost-like presence that the singer is not quite ready to let go of.  (“Are you here, ‘cause my heart recalls that it all seems the same.”) Ultimately, the presence manifests itself physically and offers comfort. (“When he comes to lay me down in a garden of tuberoses/When he comes around there’s nothing more to imagine.”)  Rae’s reverie may be delusional, but hey, whatever works.

By the second song, rays of hope begin to pierce the dark. On the slow-building soul ballad “I’d Do It All Again” Rae asserts that falling in love is worth the risk. (“It’s bigger than the pain you got, for all it hurts.”) On “Feels Like The First Time,” she pauses to reflect on that initial blush of romantic infatuation, as an easy-sway melody and earthy organ fills urge her out of her despair.

To further balance out the heaviness, The Sea accommodates a couple of tracks that are just plain sexy fun.  “Closer” is a baby-making jam worthy of Prince in full boudoir mode.  The jaunty “Paris Nights/New York Mornings” finds a pair of lovers cuddling in a Greenwich Village diner after a wild night in the City of Lights and the subsequent exhausting plane trip.  In the end, though, the album returns to its sad heart with the astonishing title track. Here Rae acknowledges the enormity of her loss (“goodbye, paradise”), sounding fragile but ultimately accepting. As the mournful music drops to a hush and she sings “the sea…crushes everything, cleans everything, takes everything from me,” we understand that hers is a pain that no perky self-help ditty like “Put Your Records On” can lessen.  The only life raft on this ocean is time.