Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Over You
Think Alicia Keys.
The extraordinary Macy Grey – here on her 10thstudio album – doesn't seem to get the attention she continues to deserve, especially for this album which is uplifting and joyous, witheringly accurate in its messages and taps into many threads of great black music (gospel, Forties jazz and soul, through Sixties soul-pop and reggae right up to hip-hop).
And it wraps all this up in 12 discrete songs with a sky-scaling guest spot from guitarist Gary Clark Jr. on the aching and increasingly huge-sounding and affirmative opener Buddha: “The future is in the air, the past is in the ground but we're alright now”.
With snappy production (check the percussion on the addictive r'n'b hip-pop of Jealousy), tight horns, big emotional strings when required and memorable songs, this is one of those albums whose time might come when the weather gets warmer.
She pulls no punches either: White Man opens with, “Hey white man, I am not my grandmother, I'm from the city . . . I'm just a lady but I think like man . . .”
But the flipside of that is Sugar Daddy (co-written with Meghan Trainor among may others) which is a sultry, Caribbean-influenced come-on with “be my sugar daddy daddy and provide me with your candy and I will be your sugar sugar baby”.
It's just a lot of fun and a real earworm.
Elsewhere she taps back to the jazz sound of the Forties on the terrific Tell Me (despite it mentioning social media) with a pre-bop sax part, hits the sweet spot on the string-kissed ballad But He Loves Me and the closer is a reggae-funk address to and admonition of Jesus who could save us from this stuff we're going through, right?
Grey sings all these songs with her distinctive, burned-edged style and invests them with wit, heart, soul and sometimes a sense of deep sadness and heartbreak (When It Ends with its disconcerting loops and arrangement).
Well worth seeking out.
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