SAN FRANCISCO--One hour into Macy Gray [ tickets ]�s sold-out Thursday night (12/27) concert at the Fillmore, I wondered if it was too late to revise my list of the top 10 live shows of the year. Two hours into the show, I knew no revision would be necessary.

The first half of Gray�s show was masterful. The singer and her big band barreled down the tracks with a huge head of steam. Then the performance derailed, lost both focus and momentum, and meandered to a close.

With her hair short and straight, Gray came out in a shimmery, hot red outfit that would have the Godfather of Soul jealous. Her 13-piece band wore stark-white afro wigs. The medium-sized Fillmore stage looked positively cramped as the band began strutting through tunes from Gray's platinum-selling debut, "On How Life Is," and her recently released sophomore effort, "The Id."

While the people in the crowd clearly knew the tunes off the first record better, the songs from her excellent new album sounded the strongest in concert. Driven by a three-piece horn section and joined by three backing vocalists, Gray got a mighty, mighty groove on, opening with a powerful rendition of the new "Relating to a Psychopath."

Gray obviously understands what so many soul and R&B singers have forgotten: the band matters. This solid collection of musicians turned simple radio-friendly singles into complete walls of sound that swept the audience up in rhythm and chorus. In particular, the horn section helped flesh out such tunes as "Caligula" and "Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak."

With an artist like Gray, who has definitely made her name through radio play, one would expect to hear note-for-note recreations of the hits in concert. But that�s not at all what happened. She tweaked and turned each tune, funking up all the arrangements until a good portion of the tunes played sounded quite different than the studio versions. Particularly enjoyable were the percussion-infused "Why Didn�t You Call Me" and the sparse and delicate "A Moment to Myself."

If the crowd members would have preferred more straightforward runs through these new soul classics, they certainly didn�t act that way. In general, this audience was enthusiastic and appreciative of everything Gray spun.

However, she tested the fortitude of the faithful with her encore, which basically constituted an entire second set.

Gray didn�t seem like she had any direction or cohesive game plan as she led her band through the uneven, overly strained, eight-song encore. Her group traversed much ground, going from straight funk and Latin music to pop ballads to a Dylan cover to German oompa music. She let the crowd sing and mess up the words to her most famous song, "I Try."

By the time she left the stage, most in the crowd were ready to see her go. She could have cut a good 30 minutes from the show. But, obviously, that�s one lesson Gray has yet to learn: always leave them wanting for more.

Still, based on the first 60 minutes alone, it�s easy to say that the concert was one of the Bay Area's best soul shows of the year.