Review: Corinne Bailey Rae*****

WHEN Corinne Bailey Rae first burst onto the music scene four years ago, with gloriously upbeat pop songs sung in a soulful voice, there was a winsome girlishness about her. Her eponymously titled album was a smash hit, and she toured its songs to rave reviews.

Two years later, after the death of her husband Jason from an accidental overdose, she disappeared, but resurfaced at the end of 2009 with The Sea – a very different collection of songs, some written before and others after the tragedy.

She's now back touring the world with a wonderfully funky five-piece band who can seemingly turn their hand to anything, and they were rapturously received in her home city.

Opening the set with the haunting Are You Here, Bailey Rae immediately showed a maturity and range in her voice that simply wasn't there before – or could it be that the material she's written more recently is so much more demanding?

Whatever, from the defiant highs and desperate lows of I'd Do It All Again – written after a row with her late husband – to the layered complexity of Feels Like The First Time, I Would Like To Call It Beauty and The Sea, the singer/songwriter lost herself in the intensity, but not so much that she forgot to raise those long slim arms and invite her audience to embrace the thoughts and feelings too.

The more straightforward syncopation of The Blackest Lily provided a welcome moment of hip-swinging low intensity. The big hits PutYour Records On and Like a Star were expected but somehow trickled away beside the building emotion of Diving For Hearts and an unexpected jazz/funk version of Doris Day's perky hit Que Sera Sera. Corinne Bailey Rae is a class act, and I suspect she is still only in the foothills of the true heights she has yet to achieve.