It’s a while since the gal known on her passport as Natalie McIntyre was selling out The Point thanks to the ubiquity of her monster hit single ‘I Try’, one of the biggest selling singles of 1999. She’s been tipping away in a quietly prolific manner ever since. Hence, The Way is no comeback album, but her eighth studio opus. 
Opening with the hazy pop of ‘Stoned’, it is an impressively solid work. Plenty of feisty females have popped up over the years to claim Gray’s Queen of neo soul crown – Janelle Monae springs to mind – but no one has a set of pipes quite like Macy’s honeyed rasp.
The legendary Booker T. Jones collaborates here with some lovely results. Apparently, the modus operandi was “old-school”, where Gray just went into a studio and bashed it all out live with the musicians. There is a lovely warmth and richness to The Way, which beautifully validates this method.
Gray will hardly recapture the dizzying heights of the turn of the millennium, but The Way is a good record. The even better news is that she is also touring, so as they say, watch this space...
OUT OCTOBER 17.