Spellbinding performance of a career-defining record: Corinne Rae Bailey, at Ladbroke Hall, reviewed

You won’t see two more contrasting shows this year than Corinne Bailey Rae performing her album Black Rainbows and Brian Eno presenting work with a symphony orchestra. One had music that did everything; one had music that did very little. But both were overwhelming and filled with joy of rather different kinds.

When Bailey Rae last made an album, in 2016, it was gentle, tasteful, soulful R&B, the kind the young professional couple in a prestige Netflix drama listen to before their lives are overturned by a vengeful nanny. Black Rainbows,by contrast, from earlier this year, was an abrupt embrace of everything: from scuzzy garage punk to psychedelic soul to American show tunes, all inspired by the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago and its exhibits on the black experience in America. Black Rainbows was the album the young bohemian couple in a prestige Netflix drama listen to before their lives are overturned by a distracting bartender.

If that sounds a bit worthy, a bit eat-your-greens, it really wasn’t. Bailey Rae is magnetic, with a wondrous voice, and she explained the purpose of each song, which brought them all to life. ‘He Will Follow You With His Eyes’ was written after looking at the adverts for cosmetics in the black magazine Ebony. ‘New York Transit Queen’ was inspired by a picture of 17-year-old Audrey Smaltz hanging off the back of a streetcar. ‘Peach Velvet Sky’ imagined the tiny circle of sky Harriet Jacobs could see through a knot in the wood as she hid from slavery in her grandmother’s crawlspace (this one is also the loveliest on the record, something that might have come from one of the great American musicals).

The band were hypnotic, especially drummer Myke Wilson, who appeared to be playing to a rhythm track in his head, depositing his fills into unexpected places and pulling them into unexpected shapes.