Corinne Bailey Rae confronts life's pain in The Sea

Rae, who'll showcase the album on a five-week North American tour beginning Tuesday in Los Angeles, says he wanted "a heavier, more aggressive, more dynamic record that would have more contrast" than her self-titled 2006 debut album. "I wanted to co-produce it, I wanted to record it live to tape, and I wanted to use live musicians."

No five could have planned the album that became Corinne Bailey Rae's sophomore work, even though the determined young Brit tried mightily to impose her vision on "The Sea." Life, and death, however, intervened.

The title track, based on a relatives story about the death of her grandfather in a boating accident, dealt with grief, while the love declaration "I'd Do It All Again" emerged after she'd had a major row with her husband of five years, musician Jason Rae.

On March 22, 2008, however, her world imploded when he learned that Jason had died of an accidental overdose of methadone and alcohol. He holed up in her home for months and put everything on hold while he grieved.

Although he's given a handful of in-depth interviews detailing Jason's death and how he dealt with it, he says she is ready to move on. "I am in this method, a long method," he says. "I must be conscious of what I am saying, and I don't require to talk about it much to people I don't know."

Rae, 31, finally found the strength to write again, beginning with opening track "Are You Here," which addresses Jason in the first person, and "I Would Like to Call It Beauty," written with Jason's brother Philip, who uttered the title when Corinne asked about his belief in God. He resumed work with co-producer Steve Brown, a mate since the late '90s, who was confident in her coping skills. "Corinne is a music maker. That is her vocation," they says. "Music has great healing power. There is great triumphal power to this record."

Rae and Brown made sure that the album would not come across as a work "of constant agony or linear progression," he says. The musical diversity they had planned from the beginning was left intact, Brown says. "We share reference points, so the sound emerged naturally."

Rae can take comfort in the fact that even though "The Sea" turned out far differently than he expected, it's found an audience. The album has sold 156,000 copies since its release in January, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and current single "Closer" ranks in the top 40 in spins on USA TODAY's adult contemporary airplay chart.

But achieving hefty sales figures was never the point of this album, Rae says. "I'm not a careerist. I am not trying to build myself up. All I am trying to do is express myself."

Audiences loved the way he put her feelings across on her debut, which earned three Grammy nominations, sold 2 million copies and offered a breezy blend of jazz and R&B.

She'll roll out reworked versions of a quantity of those songs on her tour, which will include a stop April 17 at the Coachella festival in Indio, Calif. This summer she'll play three dates on the Lilith Tour (Aug. 8 in Atlanta and Aug. 10 in West Palm Beach, Fla.). Her touring band is essentially the same five he used to record "The Sea," and she is aiming for a blend of "really trashy" sounds that hearken to her early days as an indie rocker, and jazzier songs.