Love her for her big hair, big lips or big uniqueness. Or maybe love her just because the lyrics she writes totally hit the right note. Macy Gray is hip and cool and her latest offering, The Trouble with Being Myself (Sony), comes with a healthy dose of sarcastic wit plus that very edgy old-school feel.
Gray makes beautiful music. And this compilation is the soundtrack of a quirky-crazy love affair unfolding. On She Don’t Write Songs About You she dishes up: “She’ll give you good head and she’ll make up your bed but she don’t write songs about you.”
For the most part it’s feel-good tracks — with depth. The opener, When I See You, is a singalong with a Jackson Five feel. One thinks that this CD could well have been the soundtrack of a movie about the 1970s — music for the streets, that you’ll find girls with big hair and attitude singing as they move through the crowd.
There’s also a bit of hip-hop, in the form of Pharoahe Monch collaborating with Gray on It Ain’t the Money. (Like, yo, do rap stars have anything else to go on about?)
Gray goes all wannabe spiritual too, on Jesus for a Day. How many others don’t also aspire to be perfectly prophet-like? This one is about “be perfect, like the light” and “do all my life right”.
But it’s all crazy, because following this track she does an Eminem-type stunt with My Fondest Childhood Memories, singing about killing her babysitter and a plumber. She featured on his 8 Mile soundtrack, by the way, and also thanks him in the CD sleeve credits.
Gray is an artist using her craft as catharsis. She’s Screamin’, and we’re listening, of course. “All I want to do is reach the sky. Don’t want to die to do that. Where on earth is my heaven?”
Boomkat: Boomkatalog.One (Universal)
A gritty mix of R&B, pop, funk, rap and dance by siblings Kellin and Taryn Manning, who wrote the songs, too. When the funk is turned up with a jazzy swing, Taryn’s vocals are reminiscent of Macy Gray, but when the mood is slower the tunes become undistinguished. A playful and easy-going debut. — Riaan Wolmarans
The Buckfever Underground: Teaching Afrikaans as a Foreign Language (Independent)
The Buckfever Underground are a somewhat enigmatic collective, making rare gig appearances and even more rarely releasing albums. Having been around since 1998, this creative quartet comprises Toast Coetzer, Gilad Hockman, Jon Savage and Stephen Timm. This, their second album, is a seamless combination of bilingual poetry, some of the funny, tongue-in-cheek kind, others of a more beautiful kind, resulting in a seven-track album of Afrikaans and English spoken word over percussive melodies. From the opening track, a parody of the Nedbank who-are-those-people advert, to the intimate longing on Love in a Time of Visas, this album is a stream-of-consciousness glimpse into being young in South Africa, where the trend of going to a Far East country to teach English is fast becoming popular. The Buckfever Undergound’s independent release is now available in stores, which means that Afrikaans may not have to become a foreign language after all. — Nadia Neophytou
Various: Absolute High-Energy Volume 2 (Gallo)
Proof of why so many high-energy acts quickly faded into oblivion. Save it for a cheesy Eighties party. — RW