Posts Tagged ‘David Gray’

Footage courtesy of lango1967@YouTube

An hour into David Gray’s show Friday night at Boston’s Citi Wang Theatre, there was a nice surprise: Despite the heavy flow of chilled Chardonnay, there hadn’t been a single audience call-out for “Babylon,” Gray’s ubiquitous hit from 2000 that catapulted the British singer/songwriter to international acclaim.

And when Gray finally unfurled that anthem mid-set, giving it a breezy makeover flush with acoustic guitars and light percussion, the audience frothed into a spirited but seated sing-along.

The show — which at times was gloriously unhinged but far too often as buttoned-up as the band’s matching dark suits — kicked off Gray’s new tour for Draw the Line, his first studio album in four years.

The tour finds Gray at a commercial crossroads, especially in this country, where his fame was essentially fleeting after he broke through with 1999’s White Ladder. With nearly a decade of dust on it, that seminal record clearly paved the road for the rise of other heart-on-sleeve UK acts like Coldplay, Damien Rice, and Keane.

To read complete article visit SPIN

David Gray is writing songs about death and despair again, and he couldn’t be happier.

A four-year drought between full-length discs is over, and “now every ounce of my being is effervescing in my lyrics,” says the 41-year-old British artist, whose melancholy folk-rock inspired a generation of singer/songwriters. “It feels like a new beginning.”

Gray kicks off his U.S. tour Oct. 23 in Boston and performs Nov. 9 on The Tonight Show to promote his new album, Draw the Line. The set makes its debut this week at No. 12 on Billboard’s album chart, with sales of 35,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

He compares his new disc to his first, 1993’s A Century Ends. “In a way, I’ve returned to my instincts for how I wanted to make a record,” he says. “There is such joy in the writing of it.”

Since his last album, 2005’s Life in Slow Motion, Gray has put together a new band and with it “a torrent of ideas,” he says. “We’ve recorded probably about 40 songs. Obviously I’ve had a lot on my chest, and I haven’t had any way to get it out.”

To read the complete article visit USA TODAY

British singer/songwriter last released a proper studio album in 2005. It was called Life in Slow Motion, and it was lovely. It was also a complete waste of that title, which could be far more accurately applied to his syrupy new LP Draw the Line.

Opening track “Fugitive” and the string-swept “Jackdaw” are plucky enough, but the nine other tracks mostly sink into a mire of hookless, humorless mid-tempo muck. The songs themselves aren’t all that bad (though Gray’s apparent unfamiliarity with the concept of slant rhyme is occasionally maddening—get the man some Emily Dickinson, stat!), they just sound like they were produc

This includes “Kathleen,” the could-be-stellar duet with Jolie Holland in which Gray’s broguish tenor completely overpowers her delicate warble. And big closer “Full Steam Ahead,” a walloping duet with  Annie Lennox, arrives a little too late to stoke the engines.

To read the complete review visit PASTE MAGAZINE