After the untimely death of her husband and scaling back on writing music for a while, Corinne Bailey Rae has come back with the highly anticipated album The Heart Speaks in Whispers. In this newest affair, Bailey Rae has found a way to integrate the vintage style of R&B with a modernized Synthpop. While this album is much more instrumentally heavier than her last, she finds a way to still let her full-bodied, yet silky voice sound relaxing and effortless while doing so. She is not as lyrically raw in this venture, much more akin to her first album, and her vocals are much more soulful, allowing listeners to hear her more unrefined and powerful voice. We get to hear a range of her abilities, from her edgier, more bluesy efforts, her classic smooth R&B sound, and in this effort she experiments more on the very 80’s, Prince styled, pop sound that listeners experienced on her last EP Is This Love.
The Heart Speaks in Whispers is easily her most eccentric work to date. We get tastes of how unique she could be with previous songs like “The Blackest Lily” and her cover of Belly’s “Low Red Moon.” Her latest venture starts out with the biggest sound and most instrumentally diverse track that she has ever attempted with “The Skies Will Break”. It suits her well and allows Bailey Rae to venture away from her usual sound that generally tends to be more of an urbanized version of easy listening.
She eventually fills the album with a mixture of 80’s inspired Synthpop styled songs such as “Been to the Moon,” “Horse Print Dress,” and soulful R&B such as “Green Aphrodisiac” (the album’s biggest hit) and “Hey, I Won’t Break Your Heart.” The lowest point is “Stop Where You Are” a surprisingly cookie cutter song similar to what Jason Mraz or Sara Bareilles have made popular. Eventually, the album mellows out to her attractive and typical strings heavy, blues tinged love songs. This album’s biggest strength and overall theme is experimenting with what Corinne Bailey Rae’s voice can do, along with a more diverse and full instrumentation than she has previously attempted.
The album, for Bailey Rae, is a step in the right direction to what she wants to be as an artist. Each of her albums has a unique air, but this one ventures into new territory for the singer and also allows her to show off her instrumental tastes, something she is shy to do in her first two albums. It’s also simply a good album for music listeners. Some may find it a tad too eccentric or not quite their style, but no one would really go away feeling like they had listened to a bad album. The album itself is beautiful. It’s rich and quirky, while still maintaining the quirky chic vibe that is Corinne Bailey Rae. It should satisfy fans of hers and draw a few more in.