New York, NY (Top40 Charts) One of the most iconic and instantly recognizable voices in music history is back in a way you've never heard before. Multi-platinum artist
Macy Gray makes her Chesky Records debut today with her new jazz-infused album Stripped, an intimate offering recorded live on high resolution audio in a decommissioned Brooklyn church around one binaural microphone. Stripped features new original songs, intriguing covers, and stunning new arrangements of her classic hits.
Paired with an awe inspiring jazz ensemble and recorded over the course of just two days with no overdubs, Stripped gives Macy's voice the space and freedom to truly shine. It features drummer Ari Hoenig (Joshua Redman), trumpeter Wallace Roney (Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis), guitarist Russell Malone (Diana Krall), and bassist Daryl Johns who met Gray just one day before recording began. Together, they even wrote one of the album's new tunes, "Lucy," on the spot during the recording sessions.
Though Gray is a multi-platinum pop artist, she thinks of herself as a jazz singer. She brings that intimate, late-night feel to Stripped with the subtly searing new tune "Annabelle" and "The Heart," while turning "
I Try" into a glimmering study in muted guitar, anchored by an authoritative upright bass. It's one of five previously recorded songs that Gray and her ace band reinterpret. "
Sweet Baby" becomes taut and urgent, "
Slowly" unfolds into a slow-burner, "
The First Time" has a torchy elegance, and "She Ain't Right for You" bobs along on an airy reggae backbeat. She sings with an aching sensitivity on a cover of Bob Marley's "
Redemption Song" and draws from a very different sensibility for the other cover: Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."
Macy Gray was born and raised in Ohio, and moved to California for college. She began singing in her 20s and released her multi-platinum debut On How Life Is in 1999, winning a Grammy for �I Try.� Gray is also a skilled actresss and has had small roles on several TV shows as well as movies, including Training Day with Denzel Washington and Shadowboxer with Cuba Gooding Jr. Additionally, she's made cameo appearances as herself in films like Spider-Man (2002) and television shows like Ally McBeal. In 2012, she appeared in the film The Paperboy with Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, John Cusack, and
Nicole Kidman which was released at the Cannes Film Festival. Gray was also a contestant on the ninth season of Dancing with the Stars in 2009.
"Macy Gray is back and better than ever." - Vogue
"The iconic R&B singer sounds just as sultry as ever." - ELLE Magazine
"A collection that revisits songs from Gray's complex and rich career, performed now as if she were on the marquee at a local jazz club in the '30s." - Vulture
"Stripped shows Gray singing a range of material in an intimate, after-midnight style, backed by an understated bass-drum-guitar jazz group...the closest she's come to making a Billie Holiday album." - Salon
"Gray's patented purr-and-growl vocals thrive in the intimate setting and the well-chosen repertoire...she really does sound at home in this setting." - Top40-Charts.com
Track List:
01) Annabelle
02) Sweet Baby
03) I Try
04) Slowly
05) She Ain't Right For You
06) First Time
07) Nothing Else Matters
08) Redemption Song
09) The Heart
10) Lucy
