Macy Gray - On How Life Is [Yellow Holland Import]

That voice, raspy, playful and impossible to mistake, announced itself to the world on Macy Gray's On How Life Is, the 1999 debut reissued here as a limited 180-gram yellow vinyl import from Holland.

Gray arrived fully formed, a singer from Canton, Ohio, who sounded like a jazz-age torch singer raised on funk records and Sly Stone. Produced by Andrew Slater, the album fused old-school soul, hip-hop beats, rock guitars and a streak of off-kilter humour into something that felt genuinely new at the end of the decade. It went on to sell millions around the world and remains the defining record of her career.

"I Try" is the obvious centrepiece, a heartbreak ballad so universal that it topped the charts in Australia and won her a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Around it the record bristles with personality. "Do Something" struts on a loose, funky groove, "Why Didn't You Call Me" crackles with jealous, comic frustration, and "Sex-o-matic Venus Freak" lets her eccentric, flirtatious side run wild. "Still" adds a tender, slow-burning ache.

More than a quarter of a century later, it still sounds warm, weird and wonderfully human. This sunny yellow pressing gives a modern soul classic a fittingly bright new home on the shelf.