SOUNDTRACK: CORINNE BAILEY RAE-Tiny Desk Concert #566 (September 16, 2016).
I don’t really know Corinne Bailey Rae. Her name sounds familiar, but I don’t think she’s who I thought she was. Evidently she won a Grammy a few years ago, but that doesn’t really help me.
For this Tiny Desk, she sings three songs. She plays an acoustic guitar with a folky flair. The rest of her group consists of an electric guitar, a keyboard and a box drum (I love those).
Rae’s voice is delightful and her backing band gives the songs a 70s soft rock feel. It’s an interesting mix of sounds.
“Paris Nights / New York Mornings” is a catchy song based around her guitar. It’s an upbeat song with some cool dramatic slow downs. It sounds incredibly 1970s.
She says that “Hey, I Won’t Break Your Heart” is about falling in love with a person again, a second time. And how you have to rebuild trust. It’s a slow ballad, although it builds into a kind of R&B song. The interesting thing about Rae is that she always has a smile on her face. She seems so happy during every song even when she sings, “I won’t break your heart like you broke mine.”
“The Skies Will Break” is about a point in your life when you think things are hopeless. But you should just know that things will change. It has a 70s keyboard vibe. I really like the chord progressions of the chorus. The fact that it’s her acoustic guitar that plays the loud chords of the chorus is pretty cool.
It has been about six years since Rae made an album, and it’s nice to have her back (even if I didn’t know she was gone).
[READ: March 8, 2016] “The Noble Truths of Suffering”
The story is about an American abroad. He says he was speaking Bosnian and was in the American Ambassador’s house. The house was ugly, built by a Bosnian tycoon. But he decided that he needed more space, so he rented it out.
There’s a funny moment were the narrator sees the cultural attaché whose name is Jonah. He says he mistakenly called him Johnny once and has been playing up that joke “Johnnyboy!” ever since.
This seems like a political story until we realize that the narrator is there to meet Dick Macalister, the author and Pulitzer Prize winner. The narrator had received an invitation a few weeks ago.
I enjoyed that the invitation had reached his at his parents house in Sarajevo where he was briefly staying (he lives in Chicago). He couldn’t figure out how they knew where he was, but he had lots of wild speculative ideas. He wasn’t going to go–he was trying to clear his head of Americans, until he read a little more about Macalister. He had heard of him but hadn’t read him. So he read some pullout quotes by the man and decided he was okay. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 