Homecoming Good for Her Soul

The gospel according to Gray isn’t exactly a book of revelations. As delivered on Wednesday at the Greek Theatre, soul singer Macy Gray’s dissertation on the spirit and the flesh rang familiar to anyone who’s listened to the likes of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Prince and other explorers of that frontier.

But maybe with the exception of D’Angelo, nobody is doing it in pop music’s center ring these days, and certainly no woman has ventured into these waters with the individuality and imagination Gray shows in her best moments.

Near the end of the Greek show, the singer commanded the crowd to look up into the drizzle and say hello to their maker. Then she sang her “I Can’t Wait to Meetchu,” in which she looks forward to the death that will bring her to him.

The lyric also notes that she loves the life she’s living, and the bulk of the 90-minute show explained why, especially in such candid descriptions of lust and desire as “Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak” and “Caligula” (“Macy” and “Gray” weren’t the only four-letter words being tossed around at the Greek).

The show marked Gray’s big-concert debut in her adopted hometown, and she went into it with some goodwill already built up by her underdog saga. After years of frustration, she finally got an album out, and the initial critical praise for last year’s “On How Life Is” was followed by a commercial momentum that took the album into the Top 10 and earned Gray a Grammy nomination as best new artist.

It’s a good thing that bond was pre-sold, because at the Greek Gray was a puzzling performer. She doesn’t have any of the standard techniques of projection--exciting, energetic moves, an expressive face, eye contact. She pretty much stamped around the stage, at least halfway into her own world. That kind of stance can be intriguing, but in Gray’s case it kept her from completing the connection that her music made with emphatic strength.

Gray brings an eccentric individuality to the back-to-basics soul movement she’s linked with, adding tastes of hip-hop and a hippie vibe to a snapping, sizzling update of Al Green’s sultry, gospel-drenched R&B.; Her voice is unusual, and unusually expressive--thin and raspy, it somehow stayed in front of her large band’s arrangements Wednesday, even though itnever seems powerful, and with her fluid, instinctive phrasing Gray found her own turf somewhere between Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin.

Gray the lyricist is almost as good as Gray the singer, and she took things into the shadows with “Still” and “I’ve Committed Murder.” Balancing that side with a disarming innocence, Gray treated Melanie’s “Brand New Key” as a catchy trifle, and turned the old Doris Day hit “Que Sera Sera” (perhaps inspired by Sly Stone’s recorded version) into a soulful showcase for her and her three backup singers.

The encore included a teaming of Gray and the Los Angeles hip-hop group Black-Eyed Peas, performing a pulsating celebration they recently recorded together. In their own opening set, the Peas were chaotic and charismatic, and in the communal hubbub the group’s singer Kim Hill asserted a striking, authoritative presence in a few, brief moments.