Photos: Jernej Vene
Venue: Križanke, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: 05/26/2009
Attendance: 2,500
Ticket price: €39
Singer, songwriter, voice teacher, actress, Grammy winner, fashion designer, owner of a charity organization … Macy Gray is all of that and more, an American Black music diva with the most recognizable, distinctive voice in the history of pop music. After a break of almost four years, in March 2007 she released her fourth studio album “Big”, the fruit of collaborations with big names like Will.i.am, Ron Fair, Justin Timberlake, Natalie Cole and Fergie (Black Eyed Peas). Her new studio album “The Gray Life” is supposed to hit the shelves at the end of this year. On her tour of the Old Continent she stopped in Ljubljana too, on a not exactly warm spring day, May 27, and played to a packed Križanke.
There’s no need to stress that her show was something to admire. A winner of numerous music awards, the most valuable of which is surely the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, earned with the song “I Try” from her debut album “On How Life Is”, she wowed the crowd the moment she stepped on stage, and the mixed audience welcomed her with a thunderous round of applause. At times, though, the real eye candy wasn’t Gray but her two round-faced backing vocalists. They came bouncing onto the stage in pink striped dresses of the kind that, back in the 1920s, were tied to women’s emancipation, social and political change, jazz, gangsters and their molls, bottled gin, cigarettes on long holders, and fast dancing. And fun, speed and fire are exactly the words that describe these two plump gals, from whom you’d expect nothing more than clumsiness. The ladies proved to be incredibly energetic and entertaining, and they pulled the spotlight onto themselves. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it covered up Gray’s disinterest a bit, as she had some trouble with her voice early on. Less eye candy than ear candy were the two percussion sets, which definitely spiced up the whole picture. And we can’t skip keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna, who with his looks is way too reminiscent of Fez from That ’70s Show. Still doubt there was a show?
The concert, which ran for a little under an hour and forty minutes, served up all of Gray’s major hits, including “One”, “Get Out”, “Glad You`re Here”, “Finally Made Me Happy”, “Ghetto Love”, “Sexual Revolution”, “Shoo Be Doo”, “What I Gotta Do”, “Only In The Dark”, “Do Something”, “Sweet Baby”, “Don`t Forget Me” and “I Try”, the one that brought her worldwide fame. In that last one she wove in the line “Everything is gonna be all right” from “No Woman No Cry” by the late reggae legend Bob Marley. Alongside her own songs, which are steeped in love, life, humor, pain, joy and sadness, she added her own take on “Creep”, the creation of English alternative rockers Radiohead. A much calmer rendition, one that clearly suits Gray down to the ground.
Wednesday’s concert was the Black diva’s first appearance in Slovenia, and Križanke were surely the best possible setting. No elaborate stage design, just a play of lights. Macy Gray and her backing band simply know how to push the right buttons.
Photos: Jernej Vene
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