River (feat. Corinne Bailey Rae)

Corinne Bailey Rae's voice possesses a particular quality that is almost impossible to manufacture: a kind of transparent warmth, as if you can hear through it to the emotion underneath. In Herbie Hancock's reimagining of this piece, she brings that transparency to bear against one of the most flexible harmonic imaginations in jazz history. Hancock's piano here is patient and impressionistic, filling space with color rather than density, and the production around the two of them keeps everything clean enough that every note counts. The piece moves like water in the way the title suggests — not rushing, not static, but perpetually finding its level. Bailey Rae's phrasing is conversational rather than theatrical, which is exactly right for material this intimate. The lyric content deals with regret and the need for release, for permission to begin again, and the restraint in the performance keeps it from collapsing into melodrama. This is late-evening music: the kind that works when the evening has gone longer than expected and you've stopped pretending you're not thinking about something.