The music of Corinne Bailey Rae (website; wiki) is on an ever-growing list of Things No-one Ever Told Me About—as my mother said about the Beatles, “Well I’ve never heard of them—they can’t be famous!”.

So in a futile effort to stem the tide of my eighth decade (cf. Staving off old age), I’ve been admiring her new album Black rainbows—her fourth, after a seven-year break, “a scream through the letterbox” by contrast with the “coffee-shop staples” of her previous work. * Inspired by visiting the Stony Island Arts Bank archive in Chicago, as Damien Morris comments in the Guardian,

its audacious mix of rock, electronica, jazz and Afrofuturism forms an epic soundtrack narrating journeys to freedom.

The title track:

Erasure, channelling punk:

They tried to erase you
They tried to erase you
They tried to eviscerate you, hide behind the curtain
Make you forget your name
They tried to erase you
They tried to erase you
They tried to eviscerate you, hide behind the curtain
Make you forget your name

New York transit queen:

He will follow you with his eyes:

Peach velvet sky:

And the final track Before the throne of the invisible god, “in which, metamorphosis complete, she becomes an east Pennine Alice Coltrane”:

For other rare excursions of mine into what real (young) people are actually doing (“these days”), see Two women vocalists, and New British jazz. For a broader view, do consult What is serious music?!.

* Among reviews:
Pitchfork
NME,
NYT
Guardian,
and the November 2023 edition of Songlines.