Relish Spins

Corinne Bailey Rae

The Sea

Label: Virgin Records

If you like: Norah Jones

Song to download: "Closer"

Sometimes, horrific pain can breed beauty, and so it is with Corinne Bailey Rae's sophomore CD, The Sea. Where her debut from four years ago was a poppy feel-good tableau of first-love jitters and crushing heartbreak, her second compilation is colored by the death of her husband, Jason Bruce Rae, of a methadone overdose in 2008.
In interviews, the singer, who hails from Leeds, England, said she could hardly do anything in the months after her husband's death. But slowly, she emerged from her grief-driven isolation as a more assured singer-songwriter whose musical voice has only gotten stronger.
The blend of folk, soul and jazz is still here, but Rae's sweet voice is edgier, and the music is more aggressive. Her lyrics mine darker emotional terrain. The loss of her husband is felt on almost every song.
On "I Would Like To Call It Beauty," she sings, "So young for death/We walk in shoes too big/But you play it like a poet/Like you always did." But the sadness doesn't overwhelm the music. And memories of brighter times seep through the muck of sorrow.
"The Blackest Lily" is all rock, loud and boisterous and defiant, while "Closer" is a jazzy-smooth serenade, her voice a slow burn that draws you in and rarely lets you go.
Rae's voice is a peaceful calm in the chaos of pain she is making her way through on this CD. As she sings on "I'd Do It All Again," "someone to love is bigger than your pride."
Her music proves that she is not drowning in pain. Instead, she has poured her hurt into music and created something that is breathtaking and, at times, divine.

— Michael Hewlett
relish reporter

Pat Metheny

Orchestrion

Label: Nonesuch

If you like: Musical experimentation

Song to download: "Orchestrion"

An inveterate tinkerer who constantly imagines new soundscapes, guitarist Pat Metheny has transformed his childhood passion for his grandfather's player piano into a modern-day version of the orchestrion, a mechanical music machine with an array of orchestral instruments popular nearly 100 years ago.

On Orchestrion, Metheny has taken the notion of a solo album to a new dimension through some technological wizardry. His guitar improvisations are set against a multilayered ensemble backdrop of acoustic and acousto-electric instruments that he mechanically controls, mostly by using solenoids, or electromagnetic coils and pneumatics.

The problem is that Metheny has set an incredibly high bar for himself on his previous albums, particularly those with the Pat Metheny Group, which won Grammys. What's missing in the ensemble sound is the human touch found in the intuitive interplay between Metheny and PMG members.

— Charles J. Gans
The Associated Press

Charlotte Gainsbourg

IRM

Label: Because Music

If you like: Acid folk

Song to download: "Master's Hands"

If you like emotionally raw, folksy, French-infused pop, Charlotte Gainsbourg provides a work that will make your brain bleed. And this is no accident. Gainsbourg's third album, IRM, is inspired by a head injury and subsequent near-death experience she sustained in 2007 after a skiing accident ("IRM" is the French — and backward — equivalent of MRI ).
As concept albums go, IRM delivers. Influenced by her injury and recovery, each track is in the ambient rhythm of an MRI scanner.
"Master's Hands" is downright clinical, like a medical poster in a doctor's office: "Hold my head up, right foot back/ take my hands down, shake my back." The title track "IRM" is the album's most literal interpretation, with Gainsbourg drolly singing, "Take a picture, what's inside?/ Ghost image in my mind/ Neural pattern like a spider/ Capillary to the center."

IRM also invokes Gainsbourg's French roots with "Le Chat du Cafe des Artistes," and "La
Collectionneuse."

— Ryan McLendon
The Associated Press

Patty Griffin

Downtown Church

Label: Credential Recordings

If you like: Emmylou Harris, Mavis Staples

Song to download: "Waiting For My Child"

Patty Griffin's work occasionally has ventured into soul-gospel territory, as with last year's duet with Mavis Staples on the Oh, Happy Day gospel compilation and on a couple of songs, such as "Heavenly Day," from her previous album, 2007's Children Running Through.

But Downtown Church is her first album of hymns, and it's enough of a departure that it's being released on EMI-distributed Christian label Credential Recordings rather than on ATO Records, where Griffin is under contract.

Let's hope that move doesn't keep these gloriously rendered songs from reaching a larger audience; Downtown Church is a stunningly powerful and compassionate work dealing with homelessness, kindness and deceit, and finding the strength to persevere through troubled tides. Downtown Church proves again that Griffin's talents transcend the singer-songwriter category through sheer force of her soulful voice and interpretive ability.

— Michael McCall

The Associated Press