BLACK RAINBOWS

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She purrs about the perils of beauty standards on “He Will Follow You With His Eyes” before she drops the dreamy façade and celebrates her Black skin, her favorite lipstick, and her kinky hair over an electronic morass. The stunning “Peach Velvet Sky,” meanwhile, is a sparkling and bittersweet ballad inspired by Harriet Jacobs, author of the 1861 book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Jordan Bassett of NME remarked that the album "swings from crunching glam-punk to skronking experimental jazz that wouldn't sound out of place on David Bowie's Blackstar.

The song is Rae’s imagining of Jacobs hiding in an attic near the plantation from which she’d escaped, where she could watch her still-enslaved children in secret from a hole in the wall of her hiding place. Even better is closer Before the Throne of the Invisible God, on which, metamorphosis complete, she becomes an east Pennine Alice Coltrane. Earthlings” chugs on a mechanical synth as Rae invites us to a new utopia, and warm ripples of jazz guitar ebb into the mix like distant radio waves. Bailey Rae originally planned Black Rainbows as a side project, a freewheeling meditation on the history of Black experience she discovered at the Stony Island Arts Bank archive in Chicago. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights.

Rae has spoken about a personal metamorphosis inspired by a 2017 visit to the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, a sprawling archive of Black life piloted by multi-disciplinary artist Theaster Gates. The softer turns on Black Rainbows feel nearest to Rae’s earlier material, but those, too, subvert expectations. Less than two minutes long, it feels like the project’s thematic banner even more than the electro-collage title track. Black Rainbows received a score of 91 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on seven critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Seventeen years later, Rae has taken a sharp and surprising turn toward unabashed rock music with her scuzzy, guitar-powered new album, Black Rainbows.

The first two songs are a sluggish entry point to the Bailey Rae renaissance, before the album explodes with post-punky Erasure, its transgressive fury a pure catharsis mediated through her distorted voice.

Rae co-produced Black Rainbows with her husband, Steve Brown, and she seems more comfortable with letting her experimental inclinations lead the way.

MusicOMH 's John Murphy found it to be "a huge change in direction for Corinne Bailey Rae, a big, sprawling album that bounces between genres and flies off in directions you'd never expect".Since then, the song has become a staple of easy listening channels and kindred playlists, even spinning off one viral cover. In these songs, Rae races through a surprising range of emotions—glee, doubt, pride, anger, grief, and peace—but her nimble ushering prevents any whiplash. The photo sparked Rae’s imagination for “New York Transit Queen,” which hurtles forward with blistering momentum. Put It Down” is Black Rainbows’ most dynamic piece, opening with an elegant string intro and the sound of gasping, almost choking breath.