Information
Release date:1st February 2010
Type: album
Funky Review:
Corinne Bailey Rae - The Sea
Following the multi-platinum and award-winning success of her eponymous debut album, Corinne Bailey Rae began to work on songs for a follow-up album at the end of 2007. However, she took a hiatus from recording and the music scene after the death of Bailey Rae's husband, Scottish saxophonist Jason Rae, in March 2008 to an accidental overdose of methadone and alcohol. After months of grief and isolation, Rae revisited her work the following year and composed additional material for The Sea. Recording sessions for the album took place primarily at Limefield Studios in Manchester during 2009, and production was handled by Rae with co-producers Steve Brown and Steve Chrisanthou. During the recording process, Rae listened to Curtis Mayfield’s There's No Place Like America Today (1975) and Sly & the Family Stone's Fresh (1973), as well as the music of Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen. According to Rae, a live band was implemented in the album's recording, which was a departure from her debut album, stating "On the first album, it was me and a producer in a basement going though hundreds of snare drum sounds to find the right one. With a live band, you can stretch out more and try new things out without feeling you're having to undo this meticulously built-up track".
The Sea contains songs written before and after Jason Rae's death. According to Rae, most of the songs carry personal themes. In an interview with NME, Bailey Rae discussed process of making music, particularly the song "Are You Here", which deals with her grief over her husband's death, stating "I feel like I've been playing music and writing and using music to help me with all the different emotions that I've been feeling. When I started writing that I was thinking, 'I don't really want this song to go into the world, 'cause it's so naked…' But I had to". In an interview with The Observer's Sean O'Hagan, Rae discussed the effects of her husband's death on her musical style and the songs written before and after her hiatus, stating "What surprises me most is how the songs I wrote before it happened resonate almost as much as the ones I wrote after. The circumstances have cast it all in a different light. It began as a 'before and after' record, but it's become an 'after' record". On the song "I Would Like to Call it Beauty", Rae discussed its theme of finding beauty in the "darkest times" and its relationship with The Sea, stating "There is something miraculous that pushes you along, makes you keep going, makes you carry on. It's really about the mystery of that. In fact, the whole album is about that in a way; it's about loss but it's also about hope, about keeping going and trying to find that beauty".