4/5
This Years Life.
Babylon, 20 years later. David Gray plans to go ahead with his rescheduled tour to mark the two decade anniversary of his magnum-opus 'White Ladder'. The diamond, ten times platinum, fifth and tenth best selling record of the 2000's and 21st century respectively in the UK. A classic record album from the opening "feels like lightning running through my veins" electric drums of 'Please Forgive Me', that no apologies still feels like that every time we listen to that. The big 'Babylon' hit making empire. The perfect, unmistakable piano of the sung in unity unanimous, 'This Years Love' (had better last). The vision of 'Nightblindness' looking for a brighter day like we all are now ("how are we going to find the eyes to see?"). The adrift on memory bliss 'Sail Away' and the going even harder cover of Soft Cell and Marc Almond's 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'. Failing that the great Brit who like Kate Bush before him or Adele after him deserves his national treasure place in the singer/songwriter Hall of Fame has the quarantined isolation of 'Skellig' off the coast of home studio recordings to tide us over like the scored Skellig fish and broad brushstrokes of mountain peaks and ocean deep album artwork that belongs in a golden frame even of this one doesn't receive a diamond plaque. Following his last release just under two years ago giving more 'Gold In A Brass Age' to his definitive discography, everyone's favourite Dave (save the TV channel that still gives us Stephen Fry and QI) is back when the skies are as grey as his last name this season. Like the 'Ain't No Love', 'The One I Love', 'Slow Motion', 'Alibi' of 2005's 'Life In Slow Motion' in the Winter mountains. This feels like 'A New Day At Midnight', 'Dead In The Water', 'Real Love' 'Be Mine', 'Kangaroo', 'Last Boat To America', 'Other Side' of his follow up climb to 'White Ladder'. For a man whose been writing real records, since the days were instead of streams, we bought CD's. Like the Costello music spectacle of the Sale, Cheshire cats 'Sell, Sell, Sell' cult favourite that came after his sought after 'A Century Ends' 1993 debut and the sophomore 'Flesh'. Gray has still been doing it, giving everything despite all they say in a critical world that is quick to forget but should also remember the anniversary this '21 of when the fellow best of British Corinne Bailey-Rae told us to 'Put Our Records On' and everyone around the world dropped the needle in call and response. You only have to see him running and performing his lead song 'Fugitive' off his 2009 release on Jools Holland to 'Draw The Line' to see how much drive he harbors in those strings. Somber classics like the fierce restrained passion of 'Foundling' followed like the 'Mutineers'. Now with an album named after Ireland's Skelling Islands in County Kerry, but recorded in the Highlands of Scotland, folktronic is back folks. Like it was meant to be like the acoustic, instrumental Central Park 'January Rain' of a John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale 'Serendipity'.
Dawn in all its majesty will steal you away with this one again. On the opening title track of this serene classic of a song as good as the album it was named after, David Gray with atmospheric beautiful backing sings, "Oh, that the song I'm singing/Was an ocean wide/And that the word I'm bringing/Reaches over to the other side (cue the DiCaprio 'Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood' TV pointing meme, or 'Family Guy'," eh, he said it.")/Each heart a burning vessel/Out on a pitch black wave/Chewing the bone and gristle/When it's the flesh of love we crave." Now take a look at that last couplet, couples. That's why this man has been making music from since before you were born and I was probably three (I was 7...yep, I'm old). It only gets more beautiful and as pretty as the postcard picture of the coastal town of the same name on 'Dún Laoghaire', even though the first Google search for this place asks if its rough (it's not, but life and times and the coastal reflections in this album are). All that 'Accumulates' are stellar songs from a stirring songwriter like the lyrics, "Well, it grips and it grins/It cavorts and it gyrates/And it whispers from the wing." This man is the 'Heart and Soul' like the best and pulse of said song. All before the ivory hypnotic 'Laughing Gas' will leave you in a transfixed trance of emotions, even if they aren't funny. "Nothing in the world was ever seen/Write it on the wind/This living dream/Nothing in the world was ever known/Throwing off the weight/Of skin and bone/Ripple on the water, leaves of grass/Fire into the crowd/With laughing gas." There the lyrics. That's it. But the man who has wrote more songs than the industry in need of inspiration cares to remembers needs say no more. Pure poetry in the songwriting pro's prose. There's 'No False Gods' here, but this musical giant is a real one. Changing his pitch to Springsteen 'Lift Me Up' perfection of dedication. All the way to the wrote depths of 'Deep Water Swim', alive in the water now as Gray sings to the blue, "With the weight of the skies/Like a word to the wise/And the thought that preyed/With the road rising up/And the fog in my cup/As we cut to fade." This United Kingdom legends legacy will never fade to black.
Propelling us through the pandemic with soft subtly, Gray's gentle grace is all we need like the twisting and turning strings of 'Spiral Arms' that hold us, shielding all from the cold. Evoking the acoustics of a rain in 'January'. On 'The White Owl', the 'White Ladder' singer says, "For to quench my thirst/Into the breakers till my lungs burst/For to still my mind/ Down through the echoing blue in a swallow dive/So damn alive/The tightrope, the green lasso/And soft hands to bear me through." Verses haven't been this versatile or novel since this storyteller last served us songs. On the lullaby like 'Dares My Heart To Be Free' he challenges the broken and lost in love with healing. "Try to keep it sweet/Baby, make ends meet/Heading in the right direction/Just maybe down the wrong street" as we walk with him on this cracked, but straight path to what lasts. Humming a 'House With No Walls' he channels heartbreak into a Vandross 'House Is Not A Home' like Willie Nelson saying 'Hello Walls' to his lonely is the only company. "With face turned away/From what you must say/So each to his reckless reward/We've torn up the track/There's no turning back/Each day now a journey toward". But this time our loneliness is quarantined with a different type of social isolation. We think it 'Can't Hurt More Than This', but just wait until you hear the somber, lower chord tears of that track. On the classic closer, David Gray gives us 'All That We Asked For' on the end of his return. With another pitch for the red devil, Manchester United die hard, glory, glory fan. "We're setting our clocks for the summer/We're spilled out like foam on the sand/And it's all that we asked for and more/Well, it's all that we asked for and more". Hoping we can save these days like daylight, vaccinating our lonely nights as like an old friend coming back into play he adds, "The first light, it came like a warning/This moment is all that you own/It's all that we asked for and more/Well, it's all that we asked for and more," bringing us into this New Year from the worst one and advising us to live in the moment before it's gone. Because even stuck at home, wherever we are in the world, we can find solace in 'Skellig' for these grey days lost at sea. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Skellig', 'No False Gods', 'House With No Walls'.
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