The Sea (Corinne Bailey Rae album)

Writing and recording

Following the multi-platinum and award-winning success of her eponymous debut album in 2006, Corinne Bailey Rae began to work on songs for a follow-up album at the end of 2007. She took a hiatus from music, however, after the death of her husband, Scottish saxophonist Jason Rae, in March 2008 to an accidental overdose of methadone and alcohol. For a long period of time, Rae said, "I didn't really hear any songs. Normally in my everyday life, I'd be in the car and come up with a little line, or I'd look at something and try to describe it ... I didn't really think in that way anymore. Nothing was coming in." After months of grief and isolation, Rae revisited her work the following year and composed additional material for The Sea.

The Sea contains songs written before and after the death of Rae's husband, all of which she said resonated with her: "The circumstances have cast it all in a different light. It began as a 'before and after' record, but it's become an 'after' record". The ballad "I'd Do It All Again" was written by Rae in January 2008 after an argument with her husband. She told NME that writing the rest of the album helped her handle the different emotions she felt after her husband's death: "When I started writing that I was thinking, 'I don't really want this song to go into the world, 'cause it's so naked…' But I had to". "I Would Like to Call it Beauty", she said, was written about finding beauty in the "darkest times", later telling journalist Sean O'Hagan:

"There is something miraculous that pushes you along, makes you keep going, makes you carry on. It's really about the mystery of that. In fact, the whole album is about that in a way; it's about loss but it's also about hope, about keeping going and trying to find that beauty."

Rae recorded most of The Sea in 2009 at Manchester's Limefield Studios. She co-produced the record mostly with Steve Brown and Steve Chrisanthou, both of whom had worked on her debut album. Rae pursued a sound more aggressive than on her debut. During the recording process, Rae listened to the 1973 Sly & the Family Stone record Fresh and Curtis Mayfield's There's No Place Like America Today (1975), as well as the music of Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen. A live band was used in the album's recording, which was also a departure from her debut. "On the first album, it was me and a producer in a basement going though hundreds of snare drum sounds to find the right one", she recalled. "With a live band, you can stretch out more and try new things out without feeling you're having to undo this meticulously built-up track".

The album was titled after the recurring theme of water in songs such as "Diving for Hearts" and "I Would Like to Call It Beauty", while the music was said by Rae to possess "a kind of tidal movement to it too, in the way that we recorded the songs. You know, sometimes it would just be me and my guitar. Then we'd really sort of swell up into these big arrangements, only to then retreat back to it just being me and my guitar again." According to Chris Mugan from The Independent, The Sea was a departure from the polished sound of Rae's debut album, while Paste magazine's Steve Labate said Rae expanded on her debut's mix of contemporary R&B and older soul music by incorporating pop rock, singer-songwriter influences, and occasional elements of bossa nova and trip hop. In the opinion of Craig McLean from The Daily Telegraph, the record's music evoked Simone's singing and the 1968 Van Morrison album Astral Weeks.

Release and reception

Before releasing The Sea, Rae showcased songs from the album on a preview concert tour in late 2009, playing venues in England, Canada, Los Angeles, and New York. She premiered the songs during a 23 November 2009 performance at The Tabernacle in London, her first complete gig since her hiatus from the music scene. She also showcased its songs on 7 December at New York City's Hiro Ballroom, which was recorded for the public television series Live from the Artists Den. Rae also promoted the album with guest performances on the talk shows Today and Later... with Jools Holland. Three singles were released from the album: "I'd Do It All Again" on 12 January, "Paris Nights/New York Mornings" on 29 March, and "Closer" on 2 August. Rae's record label EMI sent the singles to music video/radio stations of multiple formats, including urban adult contemporary, smooth jazz and adult album alternative.

When The Sea was released in 2010, it debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart, and number seven on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold 53,000 copies in its first week. On 19 February, the album was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), and by April, it had sold 156,000 copies in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan. On 27 February 2010, Rae embarked on the European leg of her supporting tour for the album, The Sea Tour, which featured singer-songwriter Daniel Merriweather as her opening act; the tour began its North American leg on 9 April.

The Sea received generally positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78, based on 21 reviews. AllMusic's David Jeffries called it "a testament to Rae's artistic growth", and Kitty Empire from The Observer found it "saturated in feeling and graced by superior musicianship". Steve Leftridge of PopMatters said it was "richer" than her debut, with a "darker and more sophisticated sonic palette". Q credited Rae for making the album never sound "exploitative or mawkish, just truthful and real". In the Los Angeles Times, Powers deemed the album a "remarkable accomplishment" and "a step toward something—Rae's inner peace, and her next artistic breakthrough—that has its own considerable rewards". In a less enthusiastic review, The Observer's Graeme Thompson felt the album's strong points offered "glimpses of a new horizon shining beyond the riptides of pain and sorrow", but at times it sounded "dull and flat". Slant Magazine's Nick Day was more critical, finding the music forgettable and the lyrics introspective but vague. Hot Press critic Patrick Freyne believed the music exhibited an "excessive tastefulness" while panning the contributions of the session musicians, whom he said were "technically proficient" but sounded soulless.

At the end of 2010, The Sea was named the year's best album by The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan, while Powers ranked it ninth on her year-end list of 2010's best albums. It was also nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize, awarded annually for the best record from the UK or Ireland; Rae lost out to The xx's self-titled 2009 album.

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.