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By MILES ZAVIS
 his is amazing," she said to an ecstatic crowd so packed into the House of Blues on Monday night that it resembled a New York City subway at midday. "I'm used to performing for maybe a hundred people in my hometown near Yorkshire. And about 40 of those were friends and family."
Indeed it was amazing that an Angeleno audience would arrive on a hot summer night with so much reverence and elation for a relative newcomer - only 27, this UK native has scored hits in her homeland, but is fairly fresh to these shores. Yet the sheer summertime ebullience of Corinne Bailey Rae's single "Turn Your Records On," in conjunction with the plaintive sweetness of the second single "Like A Star," has already won her a devoted following throughout America, where she's in the midst of a sold-out tour.
Her frequent comparisons in the press to Billie Holiday are not unwarranted, as she shares some of Lady Day's honeyed articulation and heartbreak phrasing, but with a much sunnier, girlish vibe. And like Billie, Rae's appeal is timeless and exultant,; in an era of often disposable, pre-fab music, she's remarkable because she's real. She writes songs that are uncontrived, shining with the radiance of springtime ardor, and she eschews vocal histrionics in favor of tuneful grace. She was even a tad apologetic about the uncomplicated dynamics of her work. "This is my first album," she said softly, "so I wrote songs about what I know. Maybe next time I'll write songs about ecology and politics. But this time I wrote about the politics of love."
Her bass-heavy five-piece ensemble, punctuated by two backup singers and, on three songs, Rae's own strummed acoustic guitar, was solidly soulful throughout, though somewhat heavy-handed on "Records," rushing the tempo and hammering over its delicate dynamics. They were much more refined, however, on the charming "Like A Star," which she introduced by saying it was "the only song I didn't work and revise many times, and that's why it's special." Its sparse instrumentation was as subtle as Rae's hushed, heartfelt delivery. The tender authority she conveyed throughout her hour-long set belies her youth - it usually takes singers decades to ripen to this stage, where they can speak volumes with what they don't say - Rae is already a star because she understands the elegant power of restraint.
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