The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Presents upcoming shows

Corinne Bailey Rae
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In 2006 Corinne Bailey Rae released her self-titled debut album, a record she had recorded on a shoestring budget while still unsigned. An early appearance on BBC2's 'Later With Jools' and some intimate gigs around the UK had already started a word-of-mouth buzz leading her to be tipped as the next big thing. But the success of that album was instant and immense. Debuting at Number One in the UK, featuring hit singles such as 'Put Your Records On' and 'Like A Star', becoming a smash-hit around the world, and crashing straight into the Billboard Top 20 in the US - the first British female singer-songwriter to do so in decades - meant Bailey Rae gained a huge global audience within months.

And now, four years and four-million album sales later, comes the long-awaited second album. For the 30-year-old singer and songwriter from Leeds, this meant politely declining the suggestions that she work with this or that big-league producer in this or that big-money studio. It meant co-producing the album herself with friends and musicians she had worked with in the past to retain intimacy and control, shrugging off the huge, worldwide expectations engendered by the self-titled debut and refusing to be bedazzled by that album's multiple Grammy and Brit Award nominations.
Sondre Lerche
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Born and raised in Bergen, Norway, Lerche was inspired by the music he heard emanating from his older sibling’s bedrooms – be it A-ha, Elvis Costello or classic rock. Inspired, he picked up the guitar at the age of 8, and as a teenager performed at open mics at the club where his sister worked. Before his 16th birthday, he was signed to Virgin/EMI. “I had to start singing to get all these songs out there,” he says. “No one else was going to!

Lerche’s triumphs and travails of the last few years certainly left a mark; he moved to the U.S. and dealt with various practical matters (including some green card issues), forcing some delays. But he also recorded the soundtrack to the hit movie Dan in Real Life (”The director wanted a musician to work with and he convinced both me and the Disney Corporation that I was the only one who could do it.”) And, most importantly, Lerche left his major label home and struck out on his own.

Heartbeat Radio, his most current offering, is certainly Lerche’s boldest and most challenging record. While it maintains the studio polish of his groundbreaking debut, Faces Down, there’s also a sense of musical adventure that stems from his later work. The songs mix acoustic guitars with grand gestures of orchestral pop, with elements of anything from 50s Jazz, via 60s and 70s Brazillian psych-folk to state-of-the-art 80s pop masters such as Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti and Fleetwood Mac.
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