Corinne Bailey Rae at The Tabernacle, review from the Telegraph

Corinne Bailey Rae’s return to the stage was a strangely fraught affair, where the audience’s air of sympathy almost threatened to overwhelm the performance itself.

Has ever an artist been so completely redefined by tragedy? When last seen, Bailey Rae was a sweet, sunshiny purveyor of pop soul, whose 2006 hit ’Put Your Records On’ was a radio friendly delight with all the angst of a summer breeze. Then, last year, her musician husband died of an accidental drug overdose. Bailey Rae retreated from the public eye and there was a fear amongst her fans that she might never be heard from again.

So it’s hardly any wonder the audience might seem nervous on her behalf. At the Islington Chapel last week, where Bailey Rae did a short set for a Mencap charity event, she played stripped back ballads of sorrow and grief.

Tears ran down her face, and those of many in the crowd. At the Tabernacle (another converted church), by contrast, she seemed nervous but happy, constantly smiling and reassuring the audience she was OK as they crammed up to the edge of the stage, leaning solicitously towards her, like relatives crowding round a sick bed.

The patient, however, was in no mood to be molly-coddled, pulling out a big, electric guitar, which she used to drive her band with a kind of scratchy belligerence. Bailey Rae has downshifted from soul towards her jazz roots, opening up deeper, richer veins of expressiveness for songwriting forced into darker terrain. There was so much new material from her forthcoming album ’The Sea’ (released in February next year), tackled with such vigour, it was hard to really get a hold of the songs.

Backed by an inventive five piece, her set was noisier and more lively than might have been predicted, with leftfield arrangements filled out with big, complex harmonies and even the most intimate and sorrowful songs swelling to rocky explosions of sound, like the blow outs at the end of a Pink Floyd epic, with Rae’s high, lovely voice floating away on washes of keys and guitars. It was a gutsy, bold performance, although the tenderness of the naked songs (so evident at Islington chapel) tended to get lost as the band built a head of steam.

She only played three old songs, all completely reframed by events, so that the yearning melody and innocent delight of ’Like A Star’ becomes a wistful reminiscence of lost love. Even an encore of ’Put Your Records On’ has the bittersweet air of a memory of a good time, rather than the good time itself, jazzy chord modulations easing this transformation. Yet, for the smiling Bailey Rae, music seems to be a release, a chance to breathe again.

The audience, and her band, need to give her the room to really fly

this is from the Jools Holland show