The problem with so many of state-of-the-art soul records is that their tone and timbre are too wholesome to be sweet. Isaac and Aretha and Sly acknowledged the devil inside, but present-day practitioners tend to preach pure Positivity in the manner of recovering addicts in denial over their wild years, bypassing the Apollonian-Dionysian struggle that makes for great, um, art.
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when I listen to music by righteous folk extolling me to make likewise, I feel kind of… unworthy. Conversely, records by the bedevilled and dishevelled, Hank and Billie and Frank for example, make me feel cleaner – or at least, a little less alone in the cesspit of iniquity.
Leeds debutante Corinne Bailey Rae has one of those voices that makes the listener think she should be placed in moral quarantine lest lesser mortals contaminate her inviolate rosiness.
Tunes such as ‘Like A Star’ and ‘Butterfly’ are hippychick winsomeness incarnate, early bird coos akin to Stina Nordenstam gone to soul Sunday school. Corinne may have something of Holiday’s hoarseness – especially on ‘Choux Pastry Heart’ – but little of the ruin (although only a 14-carat bollocks would wish that upon her life, regardless of how it might benefit the work).
On the dizzy slow swoon of ‘Enchantment’ and the soured love testimonial ‘Till It Happens To You’ her tone is so pure it makes you feel like a wino who blundered into a society do and got seated next to an immaculate belle with a set of Minnie Ripperton pipes.
In reality, Bailey Rae was raised far from societal circles – a stint as a hat-check girl in a local jazz club precipitated her moment of musical satori via the sublime simplicity of the standards. And all credit to her for the conviction to make an unadulterated soul record. Since hip-hop producers assumed dominance in pop, songstresses like Mariah and Mary J have made urban/R&B hybrids that were all too often marriages of money rather than attempts to locate the point where blaxploitation classics by The Impressions and The Dramatics allowed for the melding of breaks with gutbucket vocalese.
Mercifully, Corinne has no truck with bling-dripping herberts shouldering into the bridge, announcing themselves with ‘uh-uh’ mic checks and interpolated rhymes that serve no purpose other than to modernise a genre that don’t need no modernising on account of its being a perennial form descended from God’s green gospel. Despite numerous between-song skits, Lauryn Hill knew this, and achieved a near perfect synthesis of sweet melody and robust beat sense with her Miseducation.
Corinne might just have the stuff to fill her shoes. Her approach is natural and unforced, with none of the affectation of a Joss Stone and the way she might be trine na conneck wit choo.
Plus, she can do fonky. The Marley-referencing ‘Let Your Hair Down’ is one of those hear-it-once, hum-it-forever numbers that skates a fine line between inspiring and irritating (Nelly’s ‘I’m Like A Bird’ comes to mind).
But the supporting cast don’t always exhibit the same character. ‘Trouble Sleeping’, ‘I’d Like To’ and ‘Call Me When You Get This’ should brawl and maraud with Stax swagger instead of coughing politely and wiping their feet at the door. Certainly, there’s little evidence here of Rae’s teenage obsession with Led Zep, L7 and Primal Scream.
But later for that. Corinne Bailey Rae is what the boffins call an ‘auspicious debut’ from a ‘promising talent’.
Watch this space cadet.