Macy Gray: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

MACY GRAY'S RECORDS rarely seem to match up to her image: the flaky, funky, erratic, but traditional soul sister. This was the kind of entertainer it transpired that many in Britain had been waiting for when she arrived with her one knockout hit, 'I Try', in 1999 – a singer with a soul-signifying grain to her voice, grooves with links to hip-hop modernity, but with her heart reassuringly in black America's now safe, 1960s past.