Thursday, February 06, 2003 - By the time millions took to David Gray, he believed he was washed up.
During his 20s, the British singer-songwriter - who performs Monday at the Pepsi Center - had released three bitter little bleary-eyed soul albums that sold negligibly. He sometimes peddled them out of his car before a string of disappointing record label deals.

After a decade of career woes, Gray recorded his self-financed fourth album in his London apartment. The result, "White Ladder," rescued him from obscurity. Mixing gentle, sprightly electronica rhythms (from a home computer bought on credit) and piano to his craggy, urgent vocals and acoustic guitar gave the work a homemade charm and emotional immediacy. That set it apart from similarly delicate, heartfelt music made by countless folk-pop types.

Dave Matthews signed Gray to his new record label for its North American release and worked to turn the single "Babylon" into a sizable hit. "White Ladder" became a multiplatinum smash on both sides of the Atlantic and earned Gray a 2001 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and Bonnie Raitt's cover of a "Ladder" song, "Silver Lining," became the title track of her new CD.

"There's no way you can imagine what massive success is going to be like. Nothing prepares you for the reality," he said. "It's not like wandering through life. It bowls you over and twists your head around. Some of the (stuff) you go through is just not normal. It's great and it's weird.

"But there are many advantages to having been batted around for a decent amount of time before anything started to come my way," he added. "There are people I have around me that have been there for me all the way, the band, crew, management.

"They know me, and I believe and trust in them. That stability puts me in good stead."

Gray has returned with "A New Day At Midnight," which landed in Billboard's Top 20 last fall. The album is a stylistic sequel to "White Ladder." It sounds like an elaborate home demo, full of stark, disarmingly minimal settings.

"We went into a big studio and we just didn't get off on it. We thought, let's get back to where we made our demos, to get away from the world and quietly get on with it. It's the same approach as 'White Ladder.' I dare say it will change radically for whatever happens next, but this time around it felt like there was more good stuff to happen, so we stuck with it."

Gray's understated ache of a tenor has to carry much of the load, and there's more passion in his delivery. Loss is a major theme of "A New Day At Midnight," much of it, notably a mystical poem titled "The Other Side," was written after he lost his father to cancer in 2001.

"This was a big one. I'd lost friends along the way, but never somebody so big in my life. You know it has to happen sometime, but it had a massive effect on me. It changed my existence, the way that I look at everything, that sense of mortality. I'd been so closed up.

"My mood changed. The other songs I'd written earlier didn't seem as true or compelling or vital. The music I wanted to get across was downbeat."

Last summer, Gray and his wife, Olivia, welcomed their first child, Ivy. It's helped him understand life's ebb and flow. "To watch somebody come into this world as someone else is leaving is an enrichment of a kind," he said. "It makes it a bit more difficult being away. A lot changes when you get back from a tour. Every cell in their body has changed, they're growing so fast, they're someone else."

Regardless, Gray started a U.S. tour last month for zealous fans smitten with his quiet, uncluttered sound.

"It's important to me not to let it slide over here, because it took such a lot of effort. Throughout my career, I did more touring in the States than anywhere else times three, five or six tours on 'White Ladder' alone. It's paid off. I get a sense of how it works," Gray said. "A lot of people want to see us now, so it's either tour forever or play big places like Pepsi Center. Big shows take a lot more concentration and perseverance, I find. The moments that you're sharing as a band are not so easily shared with the room. But we've got some hits, and that always helps to loosen everybody up and bring them together.

"Playing on a concrete slab with a roof over it, you've got to bring all the humanity yourself.

"The band won't do any formulaic rock b.s. to get across to the audience. We just want to present the music. Can I make that work in a big place? The answer is yes."

British singer/songwriter

Who: David Gray with Corey Harris

Where: Pepsi Center

When:7:30 p.m. Monday

Tickets:$35 and $30; Call 303-830-8497

Return of the troubadours

It's been a grand year for the sensitive singer-songwriter, male variety, guitar in hand, anguish on his sleeve.

By Tom Moon, Inquirer Music Critic

David Gray is mimicking the unctuous patter of an insistent record executive. "We must have our own David Gray... . What? He's not good-looking," he says in mock horror. "Find one who is!"

The British singer and songwriter is talking breathlessly fast, imagining the fevered discussions at labels since his left-field 1999 release White Ladder, containing the single "Babylon," became one of the few literate hits to pierce the 'N Sync bubble.

Then he lowers his voice, a signal that he's no longer kidding. "When you think about it, it is sort of weird: Suddenly, the masses of acoustic guitar-strumming men are in demand. There are no buskers left in London anymore... . They've all got record deals."

Permit Gray, 32, who will perform tonight at the Tweeter Center, a moment to marvel at his current situation: Prior to White Ladder, he spent nearly a decade doing everything he could to convince people that there was a market for his brand of quiet, ambling soul-kissed folk. Some allegedly visionary bigwigs told him the time wasn't right for a sensitive man. Others advised him to change his tune, to venture further into electronic rhythms.

He stuck it out, through years when rap-metal was king and teen acts clogged the pipeline, and his persistence helped revive the male singer-songwriter genre that had been moribund since the heyday of Freedy Johnston a decade ago.

A stream of earnest young lads has followed Gray's lead. These emissaries of empathy detail nasty breakups, ponder Truth and Beauty, and seek a compassionate hug in a cold world. They're all tender and vulnerable as they sing, in dramatic fashion, about emotions male vocalists have traditionally camouflaged with metaphor or ear-splitting feedback.

Introspective seekers such as John Mayer, Damon Gough of Badly Drawn Boy, Ron Sexsmith, Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional, Joseph Arthur and others have, in the last year, experienced unprecedented critical and commercial success. (Mayer's first major-label project, Room for Squares, has sold more than two million copies.) Emerging just as adult listeners, an increasingly powerful record-buying demographic, have grown bored with the endless star-level manipulations, they represent a corrective pendulum swing in the binge-and-purge cycle of pop culture.

"I think it's just that people's ears have been beaten enough," says Ben Arnold, one-quarter - with Scott Bricklin, Joseph Parsons and Jim Boggia - of the Philadelphia singer-songwriter "supergroup" Four Way Street, which will issue its major-label debut on Sanctuary/BMG in March. "They're interested in hearing melodies again."

Four Way Street and its contemporaries are customizing the storied singer-songwriter tradition. They aspire to the benchmark set by legends Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in the '60s, and descendants Neil Young and Jackson Browne in the '70s - composers who transformed the pop song into poetry, and whose artfully expressed insights shaped the thinking of several generations.

But they're not using the techniques of the old guard. There are those, such as Dashboard Confessional's Carrabba, who align themselves with the catharsis-seeking movement known as "emo" - short for emotion - and simply set their diaries to song, itemizing every slight in a bawling wail.

There are those like Mayer, 25, who aim to fill James Taylor's Docksiders by crooning gilded platitudes such as "your body is a wonderland."

There are mavericks like 31-year-old Arthur, who, in a recent performance at the North Star Bar, created his own eerie accompaniment by sampling thumps and slaps on his guitar. And indie oddballs (current critics' darling Devendra Banhart, 21), and guys who sound as if they really want to write opera (Rufus Wainwright, 29) and reformed pop stars (Beck), who stumbled into their sound almost by accident.

"When I started writing [the new CD], I felt it was important to communicate something genuine," says Beck, 32, whose current Sea Change eschews his previous high-irony approach in favor of bracingly simple declarative songs. "It was really hard to avoid the cliches. At this point we've heard every kind of sad love song there is.

"The reason I think a lot of people don't like what's called 'singer-songwriter music,' and I include myself, is it's too touchy-feely. The hard part is stripping away anything extraneous, and writing about stuff that's happened to everybody in ways that give the breakups, or whatever, some larger meaning."

That's what separates many in the current singer-songwriter class from the legends. Like narcissistic rock stars, the Mayers of the genre focus on the heated moment, offering accounts of emotional distress that some find compelling but that rarely move the viewfinder from the personal to the universal. By contrast, Beck and Gray - whose current effort, A New Day at Midnight, includes several songs that explore the spiritual aspects of death - do what the genre's pioneers do: transform the literal circumstances that inspired a song (in Gray's case, his father's death) into music that transcends those specifics to offer broader insights.

"When you listen to someone like Bob Dylan, you're getting a metaphysical education," says Jack Rovner, the former president of RCA Records, whose ATO imprint signed Gray. "Now that these singer-songwriters are out front again, you'll start to see things evolve in that way, hopefully away from the personal and into a more global approach to songwriting."

Rovner, whose latest discovery, the intense Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice, will be introduced "slowly, like in the '70s," this year, says he has seen an "overwhelming" increase in singer-songwriter demo tapes. Some of that reflects the impact of artists such as Gray and the late Jeff Buckley, and the inevitable major-label trend-chasing. But some of that increase, he believes, is an indication of audience demand.

"Maybe it's because of where we are as a society right now," he theorizes. "We're listening to words and seeking meaning a bit more now. We need to hold on to something."

Gray agrees, though he admits to being a little freaked by how quickly an earnest success, particularly one as unlikely as his, can turn into an industry cliche.

"There's just this incredibly fast assimilation of ideas into the general marketing culture," he laments, being careful not to claim credit for unleashing the present outbreak of strumming and humming.

"You start off in your own little world, and suddenly [your kind of] stuff is everywhere. Saturation happens almost instantly. What I'm struggling with is everything that goes along with that: There's a narrowing of your options, like you have one thing that defines you. I'm wondering what happens when I start questioning everything about the way I write, when I don't want to be a singer-songwriter anymore."
 

Singer talks about huge audiences, introspective tunes, and the sweet aura of melancholy.

by C. Bottomley
 

English songwriter David Gray gives hope to every busker on a city street strumming “Yesterday.”  In 1993, when Gray released his first album A Century Ends, he was a man out of step, trading in angst-ridden folk tunes while the rest of the
 

world was more interested in hearing Kurt Cobain bawl on In Utero . Then Gray made a couple more, critically applauded, discs, and toured with both the Dave Matthews Band and Radiohead – nice work if you can get it. But while he earned his live stripes, at the end of the day it didn’t seem like many people were listening.

Undaunted, Gray financed his fourth album himself, recording it in his London apartment.  When White Ladder was released in 1999, things started to happen.  Radio airplay in Ireland began to translate into sold records.  And Dave Matthews turned out to be enough of a Gray fan to release White Ladder on his fledging record label, ATO. The quality of songs like “Babylon” and “Please Forgive Me,” canny mixtures of suburban regret and subtle electronics, did the rest.

White Ladder has fared well. In Ireland, it has sold more copies than U2’s Joshua Tree. America, and indeed most of the world, has woken up to the fact that Gray is very, very good indeed.  His latest album A New Day at Midnight tells us that Gray’s ear for a melody is as strong as ever. So while “Freedom” and “The Other Side” set their sights on darker musical realms, the chipper “Caroline” should rank with “Babylon” as a fan favorite.

Now it’s Gray’s turn to face up to the consequences of success.  In England and Ireland, that means graduating from playing pubs and clubs to filling enormous venues like London’s Earls Court and Dublin’s The Point.  In America, that means convincing fans that he’s no one-trick pony.  Speaking to VH1, Gray revealed how he’s taking pointers from Springsteen, and how it’s all about creating a mood.

VH1: Are the Earls Court shows the biggest gigs you’ve played so far?

David Gray: Definitely. This tour was on a scale the like of which we’ve never operated. We played three nights to 18,000 people a night. We’ve done the odd one-off show in an arena, but to do it every night - that’s big!

Watch David Gray perform two songs from his new album, "December" and "All The Love", plus an extra tune not on the record "Long Distance Call".

VH1: Now that you’ve moved from playing pubs to venues like that, how do you reach the 18,000th member of the audience, sitting way in the back of the arena?

Gray: Well, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band proved you can reach the back of a room.  Of course, as authentic as their musicianship is, there’s a certain amount of showmanship to the whole thing.  But the spontaneity of his shows is great.  Spontaneity is important for me.  In my early career, we readily took chances, like, “Let’s try the song we just wrote this afternoon!"  It’s great when it comes off.  The audience, whether it’s 18,000 people or not, knows when something like that is happening. They can tell when it isn’t just guys standing there playing the same songs they play every night.  There’s a certain psychology involved.  Luckily, White Ladder is the sort of album where just about everything on it is familiar.  You can always bank on hits like “Babylon,” “Please Forgive Me,” “This Year’s Love,” and “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.” We play almost all of A New Day at Midnight, too, with a few covers and an acoustic section.  Our only theatrical device is a set of red velvet drapes - to make the big ice hockey places and basketball type places cozier. [Watch Clip]

VH1:  You were once quoted as saying “I was playing in the Midwest, and I looked down and saw what I can only describe as dancing accountants. I was horrified." Has success come at the cost of making an emotional connection with the audience?

Gray: White Ladder’s success was a fantastic thing. But here [in the States], where research is king, they want to determine who your audience is and market the music specifically to those people.  In the UK I see a vast cross-section of people [in the crowd]:  young and quite old people – some in their 50s, 60s, even. I see weird old geezers and wonder "What the hell are you doing here?"  But in America I looked out one night and that scene was ... well, they did look like dancing accountants. You've got to keep your eyes peeled for the way things are developing.  You’re digging yourself into a deeper hole if you just go out and give them exactly what they want, because either you’re going to keep churning out the same kind of sh*t, or they’re going to become disappointed when you don't.

VH1: Where is the strangest place where you heard your own music playing?

Gray: It crops up all the time. It’s alarming how alien your own music can sound. I was in a shop in Germany or Denmark.  One of my earlier albums was on, and I was in there for like five minutes before I was realized it was me. I thought, “This guy’s voice sounds just like mine. F*ck! It is mine!" I’m a bit slow to catch on, maybe.

VH1:  “All the Love” used to be in your live set, but it’s not on the new album – although you’re still playing it.  Has performing it live changed the way you feel about the tune?

Gray: I was very attached to “All the Love.” As a new song, it became a big part of the set when we were working the same record over and over again. When we got into the studio, we tried hard to get this magical take, but we were all overly accustomed to it.  It’s almost like its innocent magic was used up when we played it live.  So it’s lying around now; maybe if I give it a rest it will come back. There are lots of songs like that.

VH1:  You performed "December" and "All the Love" for us and in their introduction joked about how you were maintaining a miserable mood.  How do you make a stark song a palatable listen?

Gray: I try to get an emotional balance on the records.  That’s another thing that worked against "All the Love."  There were so many down songs on A New Day at Midnight.  I tried putting them all together and it was [turning into] the bleakest thing! They detracted from songs like "Freedom," and ultimately the record worked less efficiently because there was too much down-ness. That’s the reason why songs like "Caroline" and "Be Mine" were chosen for the record; their vitality actually seemed to balance it. They help the other songs have more of an effect by raising the momentum a bit. That’s how we treat the live set, too. There’s always an abundance of moody material. It’s an area we’re really strong in!

VH1: So what’s your favorite downer album? What music do you put on when you’re feeling melancholy?

Gray: If I was already melancholic I wouldn’t go, “C’mon, let’s turn up the heat here! Let’s get Leonard Cohen on!” But I love Velvet Underground’s third album, with "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Jesus" and all that stuff.  It’s got a fantastic sitting-on-the-sofa quality to it. It’s so warm and so chilled out. The guitar solo on "Pale Blue Eyes" sums the whole thing up - brilliant.  It has real atmosphere, like you’re really there living in wherever they are. You just imagine them in the Factory with loads of people around them crashing out, and they’re just coming up with songs and recording them on a few little mics. Springsteen’s Nebraska is another great album for that mood, as well. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, is another.  I'm into John Martyn's stuff, too. His records have a couple of funny tracks that I always skip, but when he hits it, Jesus Christ! Astoundingly brilliant.

VH1:  John Martyn isn’t too well known here.  Is his popularity at a level where you and your friends talk about him?

Gray:  Yeah, he’s known in musical circles. He’s not really happened over here in the same way.  If he died 15 years ago, we’d be hearing a lot more about him. It’s only the fact that he’s mad and Scottish and still here [that he's not better known]. I mean, the whole Nick Drake being used on a Volkswagen ad just pisses me off intensely. I find that depressing. People say, “It’s great! Everyone gets to hear his music!” But the curve of his music was already moving upwards. He doesn’t need a f*cking Volkswagen commercial! The guy would be utterly devastated if he knew the truth. Anybody who comes through music that casually - "Oh, I was watching a television ad, I really liked the music, and now I’m into Nick Drake …" - can f*ck off.

VH1: How do you go from being a young Smiths fan to discovering people like Nick Drake and John Martyn?

Gray: Just word of mouth, innit? You discover most people because you’re talking music [with someone]. And you go and buy it. But Pink Moon and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks both have a real time and a place quality to them. You’re almost in the room. Like if you get a bit out there and listen to it, and let your imagination go, you can almost see the musicians. You can almost feel it happening. I love that.

VH1:  A lot of interviews you’ve done have brought up the recent death of your dad and how that might have informed A New Day at Midnight.  Does it sit well with you when people make personal connections between life and art like that?

Gray: After the first two weeks of interviews it became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to stand the astonishingly insensitive direction the interviews were taking about my personal life. I had to say, “Look, it’s not f*cking important.” If the songs don’t stand up by themselves, then they’ve failed.  Whether my father died or not doesn’t make them any more important or successful.  Obviously, his death gave me a completely different take on things. The shock of losing someone you’re very close to changes you.  The fragility of things becomes emphasized. I don’t think I’ll be dwelling on these subjects forever, but I used my music to come to terms with what’s happened to me.  I actually used to write about more political subjects, but I eventually became less convinced by them than I was by the more personal lines of enquiry that I was taking.  I’m starting to feel different now. There’s a voice returning in songs like "Dead in the Water" and "Knowhere." A bit of an edge is coming back.  I’ve taken the personal thing to its logical conclusion for this particular moment in time.

So does it become harder to be a confessional singer/songwriter when more and more people are listening to what you’re singing?

Gray: That wouldn’t affect me doing it or not doing it. I’ve got to go off on a slightly different direction again, because I’ve been dealing very closely with these things and it’s become very intense on this record. I need to broaden my horizons. I sense that happening on the few things that I’m jotting down.  I’m reading a bit more now, too. I went through a period where I was basically brain dead, I think – probably most of my life, depending on who you talk to, we won’t go into that!  There was a deadening experience that came with the success.  The unstoppable sort of treadmill – going around the world, playing all this stuff, talking about the same thing day-in and day-out to all these different people – used up all my energy.  The creative side just ground to a halt.  Creativity is a luxury.  If you’re exhausted and haven’t got time for it, it just doesn’t happen.  It only started again when I stopped.  I knew it would.  I wasn’t panicking about it.  But I stopped reading because it needs a certain amount of concentration, too.  If you’re reading Paul Auster or something, you don’t want to just be skimming through it to get to the end.  You want to be engaged with the thing.  You got to create it all in your imagination.  That’s the f*cking point!

Alexis Petridis
Friday October 18, 2002
The Guardian
 

When a record company advertises an album on television, it usually tells you one of two things. Either it is a disaster and they are desperately trying to gee-up sales, or else they are giving a final boost to a vast success, trying to galvanise the last few potential buyers. The TV ad for David Gray's White Ladder was the latter - and also summed up the nature of the album's success. It featured a young-ish, untrendy, middle-class couple arguing over who owned the David Gray CD. Yeah, you thought, those are exactly the sort of people who like David Gray.
A crack squadron of branding consultants working around the clock with the most powerful computers known to man could not have targeted a market so precisely as White Ladder. Cheeringly, at a time when record companies will not sign an artist without first calling upon focus groups, market research and, conceivably, crack squadrons of branding consultants with the most powerful computers known to man, Gray found the winning formula by accident. If he had known the secret all along, he never would have spent the 1990s performing in American restaurants where he was billed below the BBQ ribs.

The formula was remarkably simple. Solid songwriting; acoustic guitars for authenticity; lyrics that either celebrated an ongoing relationship or else were suffused with vague melancholy; beats that tastefully referenced dance culture. Not groundbreaking in the Captain Beefheart sense, but exactly what millions of people were after. Late 20s/ early 30s professional, former clubber, now settled with partner, seeks intelligent, introspective music to tinkle in background while pan-frying salmon for dinner party. Must also function as emotional sop after argument over Habitat shelving unit becomes inexplicably personal and necessitates sleeping on sofa. No time-wasters please.

The problem with mainstream success is that it's desperately uncool. You become a singer-songwriter, thus indicating you consider yourself an artist, a bohemian, not a nine-to-five, normal kind of chap. After years of struggle, you hit the jackpot. Immediately, people complain that your audience are all boring Ford Mondeo drivers, and that, by extension, you - the bohemian singer-songwriter guy! - are also boring and drive a Ford Mondeo. Your bank statements provide some compensation, but it still rankles. "I was playing in the midwest," said Gray recently, "and I looked down and saw what I can only describe as dancing accountants. I was horrified."

Such incidents explain why artists often follow a multi-platinum album with something completely mental: Macy Gray's The Id, Pulp's This Is Hardcore, Tricky's Pre-Millennium Tension. They are trying to reassert their status as cutting-edge artists and scare off the squares. Usually, they attain their goal rather too effectively and scare off everyone else as well.

With A New Day at Midnight, Gray has not gone free jazz, drill'n'bass or Krautrock. Yet his music is different, darker than before. He recorded White Ladder in his bedroom; A New Day at Midnight was made in his own studio, yet sounds rougher, more intimate, which suits its mood. White Ladder's wistful sadness is replaced by something bleaker and more powerful. There is nothing as immediate as Babylon or Please Forgive Me. But the shift may have more to do with personal than commercial considerations.

As Gray's career reached the stratosphere, bolstered by constant touring, his father died of cancer. The juxtaposition of these events informs the album's lyrics: "The cancer and its seed crackles on the mic", "Take your eyes off me, there's nothing here to see, just trying to keep my head together", "Flags out on the balconies, black money washing to the seas...killers underneath our skins". The songs never tumble into mawkishness. His lyrics are powerful and emotive and come wrapped in lovely melodies. But they are sufficiently muted so that, if you have friends coming over, salmon to pan-fry and no time for all this personal stuff, they will function as glum love songs, tinkling unobtrusively as you add the capers.

Just as there is more to the songs' lyrics than that, so there is more to their sound than mellifluous strumming. The production is deft and subtly satisfying. Distorted drum loops suggest an acquaintance with the Flaming Lips' recent oeuvre. The guitars on Knowhere are treated with a filtering effect familiar from cheery disco-house tracks, which only underlines how resolutely uncheery the song is. The similarly heartbreaking Freedom opens with what sounds like a colliery brass band, evoking a peculiarly British melancholy.

A New Day at Midnight resists the twin temptations that present themselves to any artist with new-found mainstream success: it neither panders to Gray's audience with an imitation nor baits his fans with a radical departure. Intensely personal yet richly melodic, different without breaking new ground. A New Day at Midnight suggests Gray might have to put up with dancing accountants for some time to come.

Death and success share spotlight on new album

Nearly broke and burned out, David Gray had no idea that White Ladder, an album he was recording in his apartment three years ago, was going to make him a star. His first three albums were almost commercially fatalistic in their titles, and A Century Ends, Flesh and Sell, Sell, Sell managed to never begin, burn out, and not, not, not, respectively. Gray's ventures to America were particularly cruel, earning billing one evening below a midwestern venue's famed BBQ ribs on the billboard outside.

White Ladder generated a small buzz in the U.K. in 1999, before Dave Matthews' ATO Records made the record its flagship release a year later. And the album's infectious single, "Babylon," spread like a pop plague, putting Gray's voice on radio airwaves, movie trailers and eventually on stages where the music trumped the ribs and any other culinary offerings with aspirations of stardom.

As is usually the case, the success wasn't all rainbows and unicorns. Shortly after the album broke, Gray's father, likely his most dedicated supporter, died. "That's probably the most profound thing that's happened to me in the last couple of years in spite of all the success that's come in tandem," he says. He set about writing songs for White Ladder's follow-up, but the promotional schedule of a freshly minted star didn't allow for grief, let alone recording. Efforts to record were aborted, and Gray finally pulled back from the project to "recharge the batteries a bit." Earlier this year, he scrapped much of the material that he'd written in Ladder's wake, and began work on A New Day at Midnight.

The album might not have a single track as immediately infectious as "Babylon," but the album as a whole is a more cohesive, personal statement from a songwriter who continues to focus on his commitment to craft. From a twinge of rage in "Dead in the Water" to the optimism of the spare closer, "The Other Side," Gray has created a song-cycle with all of the grief and happiness, anger and uncertainty that falls in between one midnight and the next.

The album title suggests a transition from despair to hope. Do you feel that reflects the record?

It came to me one night when I couldn't sleep as a possible title for one of the songs on the record that's now called "Freedom." But it seemed over-elaborate. And I thought, "What about an album title?" It's a bit more poetic than the ones I usually go with; I'm a bit of a practical titler. This is a very personal record, really. A New Day at Midnight acknowledges that this is sort of a dark time, but also that something's been born out of it. It's obviously quite a troubled record. I don't think it's without hope. It's the beginning of a new era.

And much of the trouble seems to stem from the death of your father.

That's what the core of this record deals with. The biggest songs go directly there: "Freedom," "The Other Side," "Last Boat to America." It would be a misrepresentation to say that's all it's about. There were several other themes going on and there's a certain amount of joie de vivre on some of the tracks that's a counterpoint to some of the more down numbers. It has a certain balance and it has a momentum. I wanted to make sure it didn't dwell permanently on this mortality theme.

But between the opener, "Dead in the Water," and the closing "The Other Side" you've bookended the album with death.

Yes, and it sort of makes a certain sense to me. With White Ladder, it is one long continual flow from the first song to the end of the record. This album wasn't like that, probably because it's been a more disrupted process with all the touring and everything else. It's like a body of work stretching over several years. Much of it was written quite recently, and that's probably the more personal side of it. I think there is a cycle between starting with "Dead in the Water" and ending with "The Other Side." It sort of ties around. There's no point in skirting around the issue and pretending that you've got a pop record on your hands [laughs]. It's not, it's slightly different from White Ladder. White Ladder had a real lightness of touch. But hopefully this isn't heavy handed, but it's impossible to bounce along with death imagery.

Speaking of White Ladder, did it's success afford you the opportunity to spend more time and money in the studio?

We didn't really upgrade too drastically. We'd already built a little studio in South London, not knowing that loads of success was going to come. So having built that and going through the trouble of putting things in it, we said, "Well, let's make a record here." And it felt more like the old times, the underdog approach, which makes me feel more comfortable. It's pretty much the same process, except not in my house, which my wife was really pleased about. It took me a long time to find a comfortable way of working. So having just discovered that, I wasn't going to abandon it in favor of this huge sort of budget, flying around the world recording. Today Monserrat, tomorrow Nice. We just stayed in south London. Got pretty sick of the sandwiches though. Jesus, we could've done with an extra couple of sandwich places.

"Caroline" is one of the more upbeat songs, and it suggests that you have a thing for country music. There's only one man who can really play the pedal steel in the U.K., this rather eccentric man named B.J. Cole. A minor legend, I suppose. He seemed like the right man for the job, but I think we drove him mad. "Play it faster! Faster!" He did sort of storm out of the studio at one point huffing and puffing, but we eventually got it done. It's a laugh, and it feels correctly celebrational.

Did you find that with some personal songs, and others that were lighter, that some were more difficult to put together?

Yeah, that's always the case. 'Cause the more you try and write the more good days you'll have where things fall into place and the lyrics come flowing out. Songs like "Please Forgive Me" were written pretty quickly. "Falling Free," I remember that coming in like a half an hour and I was staggered by it. On this record, "Last Boat to America," "Kangaroo," they all came very easily. "Freedom" was a slightly more complicated process. But the images came and blew me away. When you write lines and you don't have any inkling what they might mean, it's like the line in the song itself: "Stealing the earth from right underneath you." That's what it felt like writing that one. It just opened up.

If you listen to White Ladder and the albums that came before, it sounds like a particular sound, your sound, just seemed to click on that record.

Definitely. At some point before White Ladder, I decided, "Hey, I'm approaching this all wrong. I better back off." Just because I've got a powerful voice -- I was Mr. Angry, really -- I'd lay into the microphone like there was no tomorrow. But you don't need to. The song can work for you. It just took me an awful long time to realize that. And I also took a general overview of my songwriting and thought, "I'm sort of through with this panoramic politicized shit. I'm gonna try and deal in the personal." And that's when I started recording at home. Just on a four-track really. The results were immense compared to what I'd done before. Playing on the guitar and piano, playing softer and playing less. Let the song do the talking -- that's become my philosophy. I do songwriting that focuses more on the personal, and bigger issues creep in from the edge that connects to the universal. If you can get it right, it's more like a Raymond Carver short story type thing.

Some songwriters feel the need to abuse their adjectives.

Yes, and I was definitely over-adjective. I see many adjectives in my early stuff. It's a real mouthful at times. When you listen to a Johnny Cash song, it's so sparsely written, the detail, and yet speaks volumes. I love that sort of old, dry kind of folk style. Something about the singer and the voice creates a much bigger picture. Gillian Welch does that. If I have to do a duet or work with someone or do a duet, it would be her, if she was interested. I really like her vocal approach. Unfussy, not laying it on too thick. Which I think is the worst thing you can do with a vocal, even though it's almost the rule these days. You get these Mariah Carey-type people who sound like they came out of a cave somewhere. They were discovered by a record company executive somewhere, a lost tribute of gurgling mad people.

You've gone through some lean times. Is there a pre-success story that was a particular lowpoint?

There were plenty of lowpoints, little pre-success misery stories that I'm sort of over-burdened with, really. The worst bit, when I think back, was with my third album, touring around the U.S., and the record companies decided we needed to stay in the Midwest to punish us, as long as we could handle it. And we started cracking up, as anyone would forced into such a situation. One night in Toledo, we got to the gate, the support band was on, and the place was absolutely packed. I was like, "Wow, this is fantastic!" I couldn't wait to get up there. Just before we went on stage, they opened the door in the back of the club and the nightclub opened, and the place just literally emptied and we played to absolutely nobody [laughs]. So people say, "Oh, do you miss the old times, just you and the guitar?" And it's like, "No way!" It was soul destroying at times.

And has success spoiled you yet?

The whole thing's a bit of an adjustment, when you've been doing something for a long time. Success comes along, it does change everything. Most of it, you subtly change with it. Tools gradually get better, more money, people running around giving you glasses of water, "Sushi now, Mr. Gray?" and all that rubbish. But you kind of get used to that. By and large, I've found it not too bad really. But I don't have any sort of celebrity appeal. I've opted out of being anything beyond my music, which makes me incredibly dull.

The area of Wales where you grew up didn't exactly have a large city nearby. Do you remember your first musical exposure? Word is you were a Madness fan.

No, but yes, I was obsessed with Madness. I was thirteen years old, and they were sort of the perfect band, really. I was utterly obsessed. I had this ridiculous dance that I could do. I used to call it "nuttying." I do believe it's on video somewhere, me doing some of this. I used to get my head kicked in at the local disco for insisting that they play a Madness song. And then me and me mates would go out and do this ridiculous dance and people would just come along and go, "Fook off!" [feigns punch and kick] because they didn't like it, the locals with the Neanderthal mentality. But yes I was into Madness . . . still am really.

ANDREW DANSBY
(November 1, 2002)

David Gray's 1998 multi-platinum record White Ladder was recorded at home, using only two microphones to record the drums, and utilizing computer generated drum beats and samples to create a veritable something out of nothing.  The limited budget resulted in a home recorded album which was sonically inferior to almost any commercial release in recent memory.  However, the honesty and earnestness of the record was recognized by listeners, and White Ladder slowly nudged David Gray off the edge of obscurity and into the international music limelight.

Four year later, despite the smaller-scale release of the acoustic album Lost Songs, the industry recognizes Gray's October release "A New Day at Midnight" as the follow-up to White Ladder.  For the first time in Gray's ten-year career, his current record has been anticipated by the music media and fans alike.  Unlike 1998's Ladder, or any of his previous releases, New Day isn't a bid for legitimacy, but rather a vehicle for longevity.  While it sometimes reaches out with the honesty of Ladder, and laments with the personality of his first release A Century Ends, A New Day at Midnight disappoints, not because of its lack of character, but because of the glimpses of greatness that it fails to prolong.

Upon first listen, one thing is painfully obvious:  There is a noticeable lack of an acoustic presence on this record.  While that is not to say that Gray should stick to the parameters of organically produced sound, he should, in fact, recognize its power.  Gray’s first three albums heavily rely on the acoustic guitar, and even the crudely recorded White Ladder’s sound owes just as much to the piano and guitar as it does to computer-generated drum loops.  It’s Gray’s inconsistency in direction with the sound of this album that plays havoc with the mind.  Dead in the Water, the boisterous opening track, has an ambiguity which makes one try and pick out exactly what instruments, besides the obvious drums, are being played.  The Other Side, conversely, the album’s tentative piano-ballad finale, is almost as tentatively under-produced as many other tracks are over-produced.  The simple fact that Gray’s production style somehow hinders a continuity of the album, and maybe even muddies the simple effectiveness of his writing style, is reason enough the be frustrated.

Tracks such as Dead in the Water and the Nintendo-esque Caroline suffer somewhat from this style of production, while others, Be Mine, Knowhere and Long Distance Call in particular, benefit from it.  Caroline, the second track, rudely screeches with a disco vibe that begs one to question whether it was recorded in a video arcade or music studio.  The lyrics intrigue, but the techno-steel guitar confuses.  Following the confusion of Caroline is the retrospective Long Distance Call, which sways and meanders with melody.  The imagery of the lyrics “Early morning sun; shining and I’m gone” is reflected in the interesting interplay of light toms and synthesized harmonies.  This song works.

The heavy tone of Freedom, a fine display of Gray’s songwriting prowess, is escorted in by a somber brass intro, giving way to a quiet and appropriate Wurlitzer and subsequent piano.  Finally, Gray’s signature voice and lyrics, take center stage.  The clear dealing with death give the first clear indications of the ‘heaviness’ which David had warned of in Dead in the Water.  A disruption from the grief is found in the frivolous Kangaroo, which is well placed in the album, shaking one from the building misery, but accomplishing little else.  Again, returning to the theme of this darker album, Last Boat to America asks the question,  “Our heads are filled with perfect sound; But do we truly see it here; till they’re placing it in the ground?” one of the most poignant moments of the record.  The honesty and reluctance in the song is powerful enough to make one forget the confused joy in Caroline.

The second half of the album begins with the acoustic guitar-driven Real Love, which, despite it’s upbeat tempo, is just as somber as the previous track.  The uncertainty and angst in the lyrics are interestingly pitted against a joyous chorus.  It is indeed one of the most intriguing cuts on the album, if not surpassed by the record’s best track, Knowhere, which follows.  An electric guitar, a very interesting chord progression and tasteful orchestration make this track shine.  The cadence of Gray’s lyrics is quicker than normal, and the power of his voice mixed with a fantastic arrangement make this track both interesting and fresh.

The final third of the album is brought in by the desperate December, which is possibly Gray’s most bleak song.  Utilizing only a sparse bass line, drums and a Wurlitzer, which shows up in some way on almost every track, his slightly effected voice haunts with images of “Black mirrors; black hyacinths.”   The earthly December gives way to the album’s only real love song Be Mine, which echoes with a catching melody and a light, airy feel.  Weaving songs such as Kangaroo and Be Mine with darker songs is necessary in lightening the mood of the record, and Gray does so masterfully.

Finally, the gorgeous Easy Way to Cry really displays what type of album A New Day at Midnight could have been, had Gray been more confident that these songs are capable of standing on their own without an unnecessary injection of electronic hoopla.  The stripped down, four instrument sound of this song, coupled with strikingly poignant lines such as  “And as I watch you leave I stand inside my house of straw” make one wonder what highs this album could have achieved.  Then, finally, The Other Side, the first single, quietly ushers out this interesting and confusing record.

David Gray’s stardom was born with his previous large-scale release, and he emphatically stressed that this album is not a sequel.  Indeed, Gray hasn’t produced White Ladder part II, but something vastly different; both musically, sonically and emotionally.  While the songwriting is most definitely strong, and in some cases, outstanding, the overall construction of the album leaves something to be desired.  A New Day at Midnight is an interesting record, but suffers because it doesn’t prolong the highs that it reaches quite long enough.  Disappointed?  Not entirely.  It’s just that what David Gray is best at doing is writing songs and singing them. Maybe he should leave the production up to someone else.

Songwriting ****
Production **
Overall ***

-Chris Campbell

When did you start work on the new album?

WHITE LADDER just kept on rolling so I had made an attempt to start recording it in the beginning of 2001 - I think there was a small window of time. We built our little studio and we wanted to get in and start doing something. Then things happened and then we were back on the road, then went back in in September and started then. But it didn't really get underway until January, February this year (2002). The flow of it started properly this year. I was just a bit worn out after everything that had happened when I tried to start it in the Autumn, so I took a little bit of time to recharge my batteries.

Had you been stockpiling songs?

There were quite a lot of songs lying around that I'd had even from the WHITE LADDER period that I had then finished. There were several things I had written probably earlier on in the WHITE LADDER saga. Once it really started I didn't write very much at all, it was so draining, the promo side of it. I didn't have any creative energy at all. But I had songs lying around and when we got into the studio, we really had a good try but most of them didn't make it. I thought that most of them were important songs. Everyone had heard them on the road where we tried them out; we jammed them on the stage a bit. We got a good reaction but when it came down to it they'd missed their moment. When you do things live it's like you use up the magic that you should capture in the studio. To do something live before you've recorded it - that's a theory that I've been hesitant to apply but I'm definately thinking that it's true now. There's one song called All The Love which we used to finish the set with and that had a sort of ludicrous end to end when we got a bit carried away. I'm sure if I had nailed that one when we'd written it, it would have been on the album. But I didn't and it's not. I just couldn't recapture the charm of it; I'd worn the song too many times and had too many thoughts about it, I think. I always prefer stuff that happens more innocently and self-consciously. I return to those words over and over again because they're the key. And also there was a certain amount of psychology-building on this record, and I think when I got into the studio with the songs I'd already had, I was a little uncomfortable about them because they sounded very commercial. That sounds a bit rediculous. I felt like so much had happened to me that I wanted to start all over again, because I knew that if I got on a wave of songwriting, then it would be fresh and free of all that; there wouldn't be any psychology cos I wouldn't know what I thought of it myself. So that's why it started in earnest in January/February because by that point I'd written some new songs. I started from there, and then other songs came out of other songs; lots of songs were written that didn't make it on the record and haven't made it all.

Was there a particular song that kick-started this new wave of songwriting?

There is a key song that came in September, Freedom. I think it was when that one came and we recorded it in demo form, I was so...excited?....Excited isn't the right word. It hit me hard. It was a very personal statement which seemed to embody an awful lot of what I'd been through. Not so much the success because I'm referring to my private life, things that affected me very deeply. I wrote this song and it was at that point that I think that all the other stuff I had lying around became less relevant. And I thought, 'hang on, if I can I can get some more of these done...' This is a different kind of record entirely but I was more excited about that idea; more so that with some kind of follow-up record which would have sounded a bit like WHITE LADDER did.

Were you tempted to change your method of recording for this album?

We'd made this little studio in Clapham and never had a chance to use it. So we wanted to give it a go, otherwise it would have been a waste of time. We bought a desk and it's primitive by general recording standards but compared with what we used to make WHITE LADDER it was much better. When we were making WHITE LADDER I had a sense, even when we were finishing the record off, we'd actually got into a groove with the recording; the way we were working; and it was a real shame to stop but we infact needed to finish the record; get a record out there; and get some sort of career going again. But we'd found a working relationship and a way of working with sound that was going to be very fertile. So when it came to this record I just wanted to continue and felt I wanted to give working as a band a bit of an opportunity, cos we'd been playing together as a four-piece for hundreds of gigs - I thought there might be some mileage to be had in that. But we tried some sessions in a big studio and I didn't get-off on it as much as I did from just working in cramped conditions in Clapham, with just a sampler and a drum machine - I was happy with that. It seemed like that was our sound and I didn't think there was more to be had from it. I didn't feel the pull of changing the situation. Maybe I will next time; we've certainly done a certain type of thing for quite a while now.

Did you experiment more with the instrumentation this time?

I hadn't really gone to town with the production; we did get a brass section in and some strings on two of the songs, peddle steel on one, but really that's about it. The rest of it is mostly me and Clune, and then the band members Robbie and Tim do play on quite a few of the tracks. But we didn't really go to town with all that. But it was fun when we did get involved with it - it's a luxury that we can now afford.

Did the huge success of WHITE LADDER affect the way you approached the new album?

I could have been sort of intoxicated by what had happened to the point that I just wanted to emulate it and sustain that sort of WHITE LADDER phenomena with another type of WHITE LADDER record. Or I could have reacted against it, feeling a little uncomfortable with the sort of 'music as wallpaper' scenario that you're facing inevitably when your record is successful and gets played everywhere. There's a certain amount of psychology about it. Really, so much had happened to me that I wanted to get it down in musical terms and that's something that, when you're doing it right and honestly, you're not aware of anything at the time. You get past all that. So I did start this new batch of songs, and as soonb as that started to happen I did start to feel comfortable about it.

At what stage of the process did the first single 'The Other Side' come about?

There are all sorts of things hovering about on the periphery of the record. I felt that we needed a closing track. I played Clune and Iestyn a song that I'd nearly written and they said that they liked it. So I decided to sit down for half an hour and try and finish the lyric which I did. And then I sat down at the piano keyboard and we did a take of it and it just came together like that. In a couple of hours we had this song and were quite excited about it. At this point we recorded out and this is literally a couple of days before we'd finished recording. So it was squeezed in between finishing off another couple of songs and in the end I hesitate to say that this is the best thing on the record, but maybe it is. It's certainly the best vocal because I really captured something - I caught myself off-guard and just having finished writing the lyrics, I wasn't even that comfortable with the flow of them and so I was reaching for the answer of the rhythm it should fall into as I was recording. And that's what you're after; the best vocals I've done have been like that. Please Forgive Me was another one. It was recorded very, very early (I'd just written the song), and that was it: I stamped my authority on it at the precise moment the tape was running for the first time, and that's what happened with The Other Side. So that came right at the end and I'm really glad of that.

Don't you feel very exposed when you've put so much naked emotion into a song?

If I'm being honest in what I'm doing; if I'm staying true to music and myself then it would just make me stronger. If it's good and I'm 100% sure about it then I can rest and go 'no, that's fine'. They can hear and they can do whatever to it, they can't break it down. It's the talking about it that I find a bit difficult. I'm wondering about this record, talking about it in interviews, because some of the ideas behind the songs. On The Other Side is ostensibly about a relationship but it hints at being a bit more than that. So it's more talking about the personal things that have happened to me that have led to the songs that I've written. I mean rarely would I be totally autobiographical in the detail of a song - but I didn't just make it up. So people say, 'Dave this really happened and you're telling us exactly what happened?' It's not really quite like that. With 95% of the songs, it's straight from the heart or experiences I went through.

People will conclude that the line "Meet me on the other side' and the emotions expressed in that song refer to teh loss of your father...

That's what's good about songs, they can be quite revealing. That's the first line that came to me in that song and I started to use that over and over again. And it just had this power to it. Then the verses that I put in place like, "How do you know I'm honest, I still don't know what love is....." is a nice broad statement but it seems to detail a relationship that's broken down and kind of "meet me on the other side of..." the bad blood, the turbulence that follows when things break up. What really powers it is "meet me on the other side." I mean I'm not a believer in the afterlife but when I go to my dad's grave I might say something to him - but what do you do? You've got to do something. I guess I'm reaching out in that song.

Many of your songs seem to deal with the changing state of love....

I remember falling in love and that's a definate thing. It's like hypnosis; I was in an altered state for a while. That's a marvellous thing but it obviously doesn't last like that but then flickers of it come rushing back to you - you might rediscover that with someone. It's just hard because there's a lot of crap to be dealt with in life that obstructs some day-to-day romance. There's romantic love and there's just human love. Romantic love seems to involve all the other stuff as well. So I'm intrigued with it all, and I'm as confused as everybody else is, as you can probably tell.

Tell me about writing and recording the song 'Caroline'

That one was fun and it's the earliest song written for this record. That pre-dates most of the others on WHITE LADDER and I hadn't finished the lyrics of it. It came about - the programming that it starts with - was just me sitting at my computer. That's what happens when I get left trying to put drums and bass together! That's the sound that comes out and why Clune has to deal with that most of the time! You get this bizarre sound/nonsense going on but I like it as well. Those two country kind of chords that are the basis of it, (I think I finally got them out of my system) when I put them over the top of what was a weird kind of electronic little thing, it just immediately worked. It just seemed like fun and sort of gave bounce to the whole thing. Then there's that mental sort of peddle steel part that's on it releases the excitement. The way it's ended up is this high energy kind of melange. I think we had to de-melange it; there were too many mad ideason it at one point! We simplified it back down and it's now quite direct. But I think there's a lot of downbeat, melancholic music on this album and tracks like Caroline and Kangaroo, which have a slight bounce to them, are very important and stop the whole thing sagging down in a Leonard Cohen-esque type of tempo and mood. I do like to prop it up a little bit to try to counterpoint the quiet moments.

Which songs come most easily to you - more upbeat or the quieter ones?

The quiet songs have become far easier than the up-tempo, fast ones. That's why I'm so grateful for Please Forgive Me, thank God. Now how did that happen? I don't know. Anything that's vaguely uplifting and doesn't seem completely trite I'm delighted about, because it's more of a challenge. Left to my own devices I would always be making mostly melancholic songs. But when I get together with the band and there's a spark you reach for something different. There's melancholy to music anywhay, most of the time, and that's what comes out when I sit down to write. It's always more of a challenge to come out with something that's not too trite; that's more positive. Bob Marley managed it and Lennon could do it. There was a sort off earthy fire to the whole thing. Soul music has it - it just says it like it is. But I'm working on that...

What are you looking forward to most with this album and what are you dreading?

But I've never experienced like what's about to happen. I've never had to follow up the success. I suppose I'm looking forward to the gigs, and when I think of going to places I've never been to before. And performing in places for the first time where the record has done really well, like Australia and New Zealand, Italy and Spain. Places where I haven't done any concerts but there's been a good reaction. I'm looking forward to playing again because it's been a long time, in fact I don't think I've ever gone this long without playing a concert. So it's the concerts I'm most looking forward to and least looking forward to? I'm sure I'm going to get hammered in some quarters. I'm bound to be because I'll be a legitimate hate target. When you've sold a lot of records, you're accountable for the fact that the vibrancy of pop culture has somewhat diminished from its hayday of punk or Nirvana where the elite hasn't had much to grab on to. So I'll get belted formally from certain journalists. It's not like I'm dreading that but what can you do about it? You can't please all the people, all the time.

How do you feel the new album differs from WHITE LADDER?

WHITE LADDER had a mood about it from the very first note to the very end. It was a seamless thing and just flowed from start to finish when you put it on. And I knew, even before the success, that it had that. And I knew it was quite amazing and I'd never managed it before, really. Maybe my first album had a bit of a flow to it? I don't know if this is going to have the same flow. It draws on a far more disperate sort of timescale. WHITE LADDER was made within a certain period and that's why it has a flow to it. On this album there were bits written back here and and bits written there and then all this stuff happened and there's a lot of stuff that reflects that. It's not quite the smooth track by track record that WHITE LADDER was. But I think there'll be things in there for all kinds of people. As long as I'm happy with it then whatever will be will be. I have no idea of how successful it's going to be. It's not anything to do with me, in a sense. I think it's got some of the best stuff I've ever done on it. It's great when people like your music but I'm not going to be presumptious to think it's going to cruise at high altitude and just remain there for so long. WHITE LADDER was a phenomena in the sense that it was an incredibly slow curve from when it was released to the point it arrived in the charts where it stayed for hundreds of weeks.

When you've already achieved so much, what musical challenges still remain?

The challenge is to reinvent your music, keep yourself interested, and keep yourself moving forward. I think there's a phenominal disincentive built into success. People just want to start throwing huge amounts of money at you which is like, 'well, I won't go on tour any more, and buy a large house in the South of France and swan around with other people doing the same'. That's the sort of challenge I think - to keep it about the right stuff rather than be swamped by the money and the attention. It means you focus on what's important. Music is far more enjoyable than those things. I think the challenge I face is to keep true to the music and to keep moving forward. I feel like there's a change coming for me next time around and it'll be the signal to go in a different direction. I'm not sure what that is yet but there are challenges up ahead and I look forward to them. But I do feel that even with the form of a song and the run of the lyrics, I've exhausted this particular tributary. And maybe I'll be looking to reinvent the whole thing.

Are you already writing new material?

I've just written a song which is going to be called A New Day At Midnight and it's not going to be on this record. There's a few piano songs I've got because I've got a piano now, which I've never had before. Every time I sit down at that, ideas seem to come. It's just such a pleasure - the best instrument in the world. I've been playing guitars for a long time but now I'm inspired by just simply playing the piano. So, maybe a record will come out of that which can be recorded quite quickly without all the production - more of a performance, a bit like LOST SONGS. Just live performance to tape. So there might be another record like that but it's too early to know because the dust has to settle on this one.

Are you hoping that releasing this album will free you from the weight of all that expectation and allow you to put future albums out at your own pace?

I don't think this record will carry on as long. It will get a proper push when it comes out and then we'll work it for a year to eighteen months and then I'll make another record. I think it will just hopefully consolidate what's happened already. But yes, I would like to do more recording and the only frustrating thing about WHITE LADDER was it was so long between making it and the next record. There was probably a whole record in there that went begging. But hey, I actually got a lot out of it. It's bought me a lot of space to do what I do I think. It helped me make inroads into America and other places. It's provided a platform to get the music across in the future.
 

Thursday, October 10, 2002

An interview with Welsh singer-songwriter David Gray, whose new album, "A New Day At Midnight," is due out November 5.

BLISS: You chose to record "A New Day At Midnight" at your own studio, which is apparently absolutely tiny. With the success of 1999's "White Ladder," why not a state-of-the-art studio facility?

DAVID GRAY: "Because I just feel more comfortable there. What's more, the formula that led to "White Ladder," the three people -- myself, Clune who drums in the band live and Lestyn, who did all the technical production stuff -- when we finished "White Ladder," I thought we all were on a roll. It would have been nice, in a way, if we could have carried on because it felt like we were getting somewhere sound wise and it was a very good working relationship. So while the album started to do well -- obviously the story of White Ladder, it took so long for it to really kick in to big-time success that when we started getting some money back from selling the records ourselves, I decided we should build a studio so we could make the next record in a slightly upgraded fashion. So we did that and then we just paid rent on it basically while we were waiting to use it, as we toured for the next two years."

BLISS: Prior to that, where was this studio?

DAVID GRAY: "Well for "White Ladder," it was in my house, but for this record, it was down in Clapham in South London. So we had a studio and I just wanted to use it. We had all our equipment in there and we tried getting a band together and going into a big studio, but I prefer working in a small way. We used posh studios for strings and for doing bits and bobs that we couldn't do in our place, so we used the best of both worlds."

BLISS: Was it an exaggeration that the studio is so small you couldn't fit a piano in there?

DAVID GRAY: "That's true. Well, a grand piano. You could fit an upright thing in. For things like that, it's a bit annoying to be honest. But you can get a drum kit set up."

BLISS: You could have chosen something a little bigger.

DAVID GRAY: "It was just what was available at the time."

BLISS: Also, with the money now available, you could have gone with an outside producer for "A New Day At Midnight," but decided to self-produce.

DAVID GRAY: "Yeah, there's three of us. It's me, Clune and Lestyn. That's the production credit. We did the lion's share of the work."

BLISS: As a songwriter, with the expected success of White Ladder and the demands that are placed on you with a hit record, was that stifling because you had less time than usual for yourself?

DAVID GRAY: "Certainly when I was on the road, it dried up completely and utterly, and that was because of precisely that. There was no time, and when I did have a little bit of time, my brain had been so pounded into submission by having to play "Babylon" every morning (laughs) that there was nothing going on up there songwriting-wise. It wasn't until I got home that it started up again. It wasn't like that initially. I was writing on the road like I usually do, but as it intensified, I was doing so much promo, especially over (in America) that it knocks the stuffing out of you."'

BLISS: Did you ever consider it a welcome break?

DAVID GRAY: "No. You're making something new and it's an exciting thing, giving birth to these ideas and when you get cut off from it, there's something missing. There's nothing inspiring telling different people the same thing city after city. After a while, you lose ideas, as far as angles. You milk the joy from the process. It's like joining the dots a lot of time."

BLISS: Did it worry you that you might not be able to get back into the swing of writing?

DAVID GRAY: "No, because I've never had real problems like that. The only real anxieties I suppose were in following up a successful record, the psychology of making this record. I had some songs that I had written and we'd taken them out on the road and we'd played them a bit and people had heard them, and we got a very good reaction. They became important and then we got into the studio. We tried to record them and I couldn't really get it. And I think we just became too self-conscious about it, all of us. We were thinking that we had to follow something up and they sounded like big hit singles. I sort of knocked it on the head and said, 'I just want to write some new stuff. It doesn't seem to have the same spark as the songs I wrote when I came off the road and started tapping into what I'd been through.' So that was the only stumbling block, I think, was thinking about things too much. But we didn't make "White Ladder 2." We just made another album. It's my sixth album. This one's different again."

BLISS: Having Clune and Lestyn as sounding boards probably enabled you to get through those stumbling blocks faster.

DAVID GRAY: "Yeah, I think we were all feeling the same thing. At the moment that someone acknowledged it, it was 'Yeah, yeah, let's work on new stuff, then we don't really know what we're doing. There's no plan. It's just making music, same as it ever was,' and once we did that, we were off really. And that's how the record started."

BLISS: What was this sudden success like? Did you have time to breathe and enjoy it? Was it amusing? People start kissing your ass and you can do no wrong.

DAVID GRAY: "It was a big improvement on no success. It makes you realize what the past was like."

BLISS: You always had the respect.

DAVID GRAY: "I did. I had certain things, that's true. I found the success obviously thoroughly enjoyable in terms of doing the concerts and seeing the crowds turn up and the atmosphere, everyone getting into it. To see the music getting across to so many people, that's been amazing. And, yes, you are surrounded by smiling people who now are incredibly nice to you and want to fetch things for you (laughs). But I think it was a very grounding experience because my dad was very ill at the same time. That was by far the more profound thing. Although if I had just become successful and everything else had remained the same, I would have probably allowed it to affect me more, but I just haven't had the time. There's been too much stuff going on in my personal life that is of far greater note than worrying about success or getting up my own arse about it. So I don't think it's really had a profound effect. It was weird when I got off tour and I was wandering around in London and people were coming up and staring at me, when I was at the supermarket burying oranges and stuff. I found that all a little bit uncomfortable at times. But it's sort of died down. I might be successful as a musician, but I haven't become a part of this celebrity world -- at all."

BLISS: The success just affords you the opportunity to have, say, strings on this record.

DAVID GRAY: "Yeah, we've done a few little production things on it, not that many. We didn't really go to town."

BLISS: Is that a xylophone on "Last Boat To America"?

DAVID GRAY: "That is one of those little thumb pianos."

BLISS: Anything else unusual?

DAVID GRAY: "We have a melodica on "Kangaroo." That was good fun. We went out and bought one especially. There's a dulcimer on "Be Mine." Wurlitzer was something I bought and that's turned up on nearly every track. I love it so much."

BLISS: Are you playing keyboards, too?

DAVID GRAY: "Yeah, yeah. All the instruments are basically played by myself and Clune. Occasionally there's some bass played by Robbie (Malone), who plays bass in the band and some keyboards and a bit of electric guitar by Tim (Bradshaw) who plays in the band too, but most of it is me and Clune. So I play keys and guitars and he, by and large, he does bass and the rhythm side of things. So there is a bit of crossover. Mind you, I never play the drums."

BLISS: Did you write post 9/11? "Freedom" for instance, with lines like 'a world that's lost its meaning' sounds like you did.

DAVID GRAY: "No, 'Freedom' was written just before. It was an unhappy or happy coincidence. No, I didn't consciously weave anything referring to September 11th into the album. The essential core of the writing was about losing my father. My personal loss and the grief and the shock of that obviously chimes with the more general shock and grief that's been felt since September 11th. This question has come up quite a lot. I've only just started doing the interviews, but I didn't consciously attempt to do anything explicitly to do with September 11th. I definitely didn't go there."

BLISS: Why is that? That seems to be common among many songwriters this past year.

DAVID GRAY: "Well I was sort of in full swing. I opened myself up and I had a lot of personal stuff I needed to deal with and that's what came out in the songs. It wasn't a real decision, but I did start writing some stuff that was heading that way, more politicized I guess you could call them, but they just sounded crap to me really. It was bigger than I could see it. And I'm far happy dealing with the small scale, dealing with the personal, and, through those details, striking a bigger chord, the universal picture kind of thing. That's how I'm happier writing. And on a smaller scale, that's been true for a while. Earlier on in my career, I used to try these panoramic, diatribe, political, ranty songs, but I've shied away from that a little bit. Having said that, "Dead In The Water" does seem to have a little bit of an edge to it."

BLISS: If you are writing about something as personal and traumatic and life-changing as your father's passing, then in the next year you're going to have to go out and talk about. Does it make it more difficult or does it get you through it?

DAVID GRAY: "I guess you just objectify it, put it at arms length. I don't really know how I'm going to handle it. There's bound to be some uncomfortable conversations."

BLISS: There's bound to be some inappropriate questions from insensitive media.

DAVID GRAY: "Exactly, and I haven't really honestly thought about it, not that I would do anything any different. There's a catharsis in making the music, a real release in singing the songs. That's all part of the healing process as far as I'm concerned, but talking about it, it's a different thing. If you're talking to someone and you get on with them and you're having an interesting in-depth conversation, it could be an interesting thing to talk about, but, by and large, that's not what this job is about. Mainly, you're just filling some space up in some magazine."

BLISS: Are you comfortable, from all the interviews you've done in the past, saying to a journalist, 'I'd rather not talk about that,' rather than feel an obligation to answer every one?

DAVID GRAY: "Yeah, I do at this point. I'm waiting to see how I feel. I haven't done a lot of stuff yet. You're getting me hot off the production line (laughs)."

BLISS: I can catch you off guard.

DAVID GRAY: "(laughs). Yes, you can, but two months time, I might have had enough of it. Well, maybe the interviews will be slightly more selective this time. In the past, I've had to do just about anything and you come across a lot of people who don't really care. You get, as you said, inappropriate (questions) and I would think it would be a little bit uncomfortable. This album, a lot of it is very personal."

BLISS: When are touring?

DAVID GRAY: "Well the tour in the UK starts November/December, than we come to the U.S. in January/February."

BLISS: The first single, "The Other Side," is the last track on the album.

DAVID GRAY: "It's a bold choice. It wasn't my idea. There were a few slightly safer options, but the record company guy over in England just really liked that song and just suggested that that be a single. It's different than just doing the obviously thing. It shows that you're in a position that you have something to offer. You're not just playing the game. It's a more challenging listen, so I was excited by the idea of taking a risk and playing Russian roulette with my own career (laughs)."

BLISS: What inspired the lyrics?

DAVID GRAY: "The chorus line, 'Meet me on the other side' was the first thing I started singing and I did sketch in a sort of narrative in the verses, which was someone talking about their relationship with someone. So it's like meet me on the other side of this breakdown or this turmoil, but really it seems to be a call to the void about grief, I think."

BLISS: Is the video melancholy?

DAVID GRAY: "It's incredibly happy, ridiculously happy, like Ronald McDonald meets Scooby Doo."

BLISS: Are you serious?

DAVID GRAY: "No. It's more fun not being serious (laughs). It's the most spectacular puppet video (joking again). No, I don't know exactly what it's going to be like. I haven't seen the final edit, but we used loads and load of extras."

BLISS: No puppets.

DAVID GRAY: "No puppets. But the puppets are coming."

BLISS: Oh, the British sarcasm. That's what you should have done, puppets.

DAVID GRAY: "Next video. Then I won't have to be in it. I realize that puppets are the way forward."

BLISS: You could do the Elton John thing - have Robert Downey Jr. and Justin Timberlake fill in and not have to appear.

DAVID GRAY: "It's so stupid though ain't it?"

BLISS: Speaking of other artists, Bonnie Raitt covered "Silver Lining" from "White Ladder" and you sang on "Illuminate" from your brother in law's Phil Hartnoll's band, Orbital. Would you like to collaborate with other artists?

DAVID GRAY: "I haven't really had time to do all that. That's a luxury of being a musician. Life has been very full just getting this record done. I would love to do a couple of duets. Gillian Welch I really like her. For a duet, I'd throw a song in her direction and see if she was up for it, but beyond that, if Nina Simone wants me to sing on something, I'll be there. I haven't really thought it through. I'd love to."
 

After David Gray's manager heard "Dead in the Water," the first song from the Welsh singer/songwriter's forthcoming album, he made a suggestion.

"He thought I should change it to 'In Bed With Your Daughter,' which he thought had more commercial potential," Gray said with a smirk. "But I knocked that on the head."

On A New Day at Midnight, due November 5, there's no getting around the somber tone of Gray's most introspective collection of songs yet.

His fifth studio album was written as White Ladder was selling millions of copies, but also while his father was dying of cancer.

"I was having these mad conversations," Gray said, rubbing his hand across the stubble on his face. "He was very sick, and you get into this strange thing of once cancer rears its ugly head, you never get a straight answer. [You hear,] 'The test results will be in next week,' and you're foolishly hoping it's going to be good news, but you never quite get ..."

Gray paused to collect his thoughts.

"Anyway, there was lots of that going on, while everything was going incredibly well in another way," he continued. "The songs I was writing back then, there's a lot of that emotion running through them. That's the core of this record, there's no point pretending otherwise. It's not quite as poppy on the whole as White Ladder was, [pop] by my standards. This has more depth and is a more personal statement. That's just the way it came out. I had a lot of stuff to deal with."

While A New Day at Midnight has its cheerful moments, like "Caroline" and "Real Love," most of the album is darker and quieter than his breakthrough single, "Babylon," which was the kind of infectious fare you would expect Dave Matthews to release on his label (see "David Gray: Say Hello").

The album opens with "Dead in the Water," a solemn tune on the surface but not one of the album's more personal numbers, according to Gray.

"I caught something that happens to songwriters — Elvis Costelloism," Gray explained. "That's where you have chord changes every few seconds. I got this chord sequence that was just never-ending. It was like major, minor, seventh, major, minor. I thought I'd turned into the Beatles or something. Normally I'm like, 'G, C, where should I go now?' This was sophisticated songwriting. On a technical level, that's what happened, so because of that, weaving the lyrics in was a bit more complicated. There's wasn't that much room."

Gray started singing the words "Dead in the water" and then simply added other ambiguous verses. "It's just sort of mish mash, not to demystify it too much," he said. "It's like my earlier albums in that it's slightly more aggressive, more controversial. I'm not really sure what it's about, but it's got an anti-religious bent to it. It seems to be critical. ... And I like starting the record with it, because it immediately is completely different from White Ladder."

A New Day at Midnight's first single is the album's closer, "The Other Side." The lyrics, like those of "Babylon," reflect on a shattered relationship, although given the context of the song, it clearly has a double meaning.

"The lyrics are suggesting that the person singing the song is singing it to someone else who he has been in a relationship with that's broken down," Gray explained. "It's like, 'Meet me on the other side of this' kind of thing. The other side of this turmoil and heartbreak. The power of the lyrics suggests, [however,] 'Meet me on the other side of death.' It's a bit of a call into the void. That's where the song gains its power. And that's what seems to have come out stronger than all the lyrics."

"The Other Side" was the last song Gray recorded for the album and was done much more quickly than the others were. His vocals on the album are actually from the first take of the song, when Gray was at his most revealing. "When you catch yourself off guard, you're really blown away," he said.

Gray recently shot a video for the single in London, where he invited thousands of fans onto the set. The clip begins with Gray singing straight into the camera in complete darkness, but when the drums kick in, lights beam out to reveal the many onlookers surrounding him.

"It's not like they're my audience, but thousands of souls," Gray explained. "It's just a simple idea. It's such a stark song. It's not something you can do a quick-cut, whistles-and-bells kind of video for. That would just be ridiculous. It had to be incredibly simple."

After hearing the song a few times, the audience began singing along, even adding a harmony part that isn't on the recording.

"It actually sounded really cool," Gray said. "But it might sound like crap in the post-production."

—Corey Moss, with additional reporting by Jennifer Vineyard

Follow-up to "White Ladder" finds tragedy amid success
 

David Gray will release his fifth studio album, A New Day at Midnight on October 5th. For Gray, the album's release is almost like starting anew, as the multi-platinum success of the left-field 2000 hit, White Ladder, has, if nothing else, ensured that infamous stories -- like being billed below sold-out bar-b-que at one midwest venue -- are a thing of the past.
That said, Gray's success was tempered by the death of his father nearly two years ago, an event he calls, "probably the most profound thing that's happened to me in the last couple of years in spite of all the success that's come in tandem." Bookended by a pair of songs with contrasting types of death imagery -- the grim, opening "Dead in the Water" and the hopeful, closing "The Other Side" -- A New Day captures an emotional cycle that tempers despair with hope in the form of the more upbeat songs like the cryptic, ethereal "Kangaroo," and more upbeat songs like "Real Love" and "Caroline."

"My father dying, that's what the core of this record deals with," Gray says. "The biggest songs go directly there: "Freedom," "The Other Side," "Last Boat to America." [But] it would be a misrepresentation to say that's all it's about. There were several other themes going on and there's a certain amount of joie de vivre on some of the tracks that's a counterpoint to some of the more down numbers. It has a certain balance and it has a momentum. I wanted to make sure it didn't dwell permanently on this mortality theme. There are other songs and there's a sort of release there, when they come along."

Calling the album a follow-up to White Ladder doesn't quite acknowledge the road Gray took to where he is today. His first three records -- 1993's A Century Ends, 1994's Flesh and 1996's Sell, Sell, Sell -- were met with rigid indifference. Even White Ladder (which was released in the U.K. in 1999), was slow to find its feet. Recorded in his apartment, the album earned its stripes 5,000 records at a time in the U.K., before Dave Matthews made it the flagship release for his ATO Records a year later. The record moved slow and steady, with it's hooky single, "Babylon," eventually making it one of the year's most unlikely lost ships in the mainstream.

That mainstream became a riptide of touring and promotional duty, and Gray made several attempts to start the new record, before opting to scrap much of what he'd written in the wake of White Ladder and take a bit of time "to recharge the batteries a bit." If the darker tone of the record reflects changes in Gray's life over the past couple of years, his recording process wasn't spoiled by success. Gray built a studio in south London in order to avoid recording in his place of residence ("which my wife was really pleased about"), but otherwise the template remained in place. "I kept it simple and that felt right," he says. "Everything's changed in a certain way, but then nothing really has. It's still the same process. It took me a long time to find a comfortable way of working. So having just discovered that, I wasn't going to abandon it, in favor of this huge sort of budget, flying around the world recording. Today, Monserrat . . . tomorrow, Nice. We just stayed in south London. Got pretty sick of the sandwiches though. Jesus, we could've done with an extra couple sandwich places."

Gray says the majority of the songs were penned this year, but that the new material, and a few survivors penned during White Ladder promotion, gave the album a sense of equilibrium. "I think it could have been last year's record, but so much happened that I wanted to write whole new songs," he says. "And they're the ones that dominate. But it seemed a shame to waste some of the stuff, so this is my little body of work and I think it ties together. So it's like a body of work stretching over several years."

A tour of the U.K. is on the docket for November and December, at which point Gray will likely return to the U.S. for further promotional duty and a tour . . . midwest and all. "I cherish the midwest really," he says. We've had a rough and tumble relationship."

ANDREW DANSBY
(September 20, 2002)

David Gray performs only US stop at the FleetCenter

Artist talks about his latest album, performing at MixFest, and large venues

By Chris Rattey, Boston.com staff, 09/23/2002

David Gray brought his silky song stylings to the FleetCenter this weekend for the Mix 98.5 MixFest, his only US stop this year before heading to Europe on a tour promoting his latest album, "A New Day at Midnight," to be released at the end of October. Boston.com had a chance to chat backstage with the artist.
 

What can we expect from your new album?

You can expect it to be different…it’s got a different mood to it. I am happy with it. We worked a long time on it, I think it’s important that we felt there weren’t any cracks there. This time it’s going out and everyone's going to scrutinize it. It was only at the end that all the ‘we must get this finished’ popped up. I’ve never had this big build up before.

Are you nervous about that?

Essentially…yeah, I just want to get it out. ‘White Ladder’ was cracked before it came to this mass media. It already built it’s story, and it just kept rolling. So everyone either jumped on board, or didn’t. This time it’s like the big build up ahead of time, and that’s a completely new experience for me. I’ve made a lot of records before, but none of them were like two months before I was talking about it. I found that a bit weird.

I mean, the record’s the same, in that it’s the same group of people that made it (White Ladder), and I didn’t want to change too much the way we did White Ladder. Just keep it low key. It’s a tiny little studio, we did whatever we wanted with the music, with the same people. So that’s the way it’s similar, but I think the mood of the record is different. From the first track, you realize it’s not ‘White Ladder Part II’, it’s something else. So I hope people like it.

What was it like releasing White Ladder in 1998?

In 98…those were such early days. We put that record out ourselves. We pressed out 4,000 copies, and we were hoping we could just sell them all so we could press some more. And we did our first-ever White Ladder tour in Ireland, about 15 different dates. Which in Ireland is a lot, it’s a very small place. It’s like playing 15 dates in Massachusetts.

It was a wild time. It’s so much more hard work when you’re a struggling band. You know…you’re in a crap hotel, you’ve got a crap van full of stuff all over you, then you have to unload all the stuff. Then you’ve got to do the sound check, maybe get something from the local take-out, do the gig, then you have to load all the stuff back in the van.

The weird part is that you party so much harder. It’s like you almost have to keep the spirits up. That’s what I remember about that…it was a very heavy drinking tour. I’ve never had a heavier drinking tour. It was a complete and utter blast from start to finish. By the end of it, I was totally poisoned. It took me about a week and a half to get out of bed. It was fantastic. By the time we got to Dublin at the end of that, that was the start of White Ladder. You could feel things happening…even there. We all had a good vibe about it.

This is your only US stop on your current tour. Why MixFest…why Boston?

Essentially we’re sort of rehearsing our new stuff now, so we’re not really ready to play any shows, but we had a commitment here because of the events last year (September 11 attacks), the show got canceled. So we said ‘don’t worry, we’ll come back next year.’ So that’s really why.

What is the difference between fans in the US and fans in Europe?

Um…don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a big difference in the way they respond to me. I think that over here you get a lot of music. It’s hard to generalize about America, though, because the place is far too big. It’s tied together by very simple ideas, but what you have essentially here is a country that’s completely different all over the place. New Orleans doesn’t have much in common with a place in the midwest.

It’s hard to generalize. I can tell you city by city. Like San Francisco they go crazy. New York you have to work harder to warm them up a bit. LA…forget it. There are so many media people there, it’s like walking through sludge. Boston is great. Virtually every gig that I’ve done here there’s been a big, big vibe. Especially the gig at Avalon.

How do you like big venues as opposed to small?

Well…this [FleetCenter] is big, big. So it’s something that I’m getting used to. And it’s interesting tonight, because the first gig, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the size of it. That’s obviously something that just happens in your head. I don’t know so much about creating an intimate experience onstage with so many people…how do look up and see what’s happening and sense any tiny change? It tends to be a bit more ‘’whoa!"…you got pyrotechnics…Babylon…kaboom…we’ve got that song, and that’s always going to work in arenas, we’ll just play it over and over again.

But I don’t know, that’s an unanswered question. Essentially, the place has to fit so many people, unless you want to do like 400 nights. You have to play in big places for them all to come and see it. The challenge is to keep the vibe, and not make it some puppeteer version of what we’re supposed to be. I think the most rewarding part of the show are the bits in between, maybe something happens that will only happen that one night. We’ll try a song we don’t usually do…blah blah blah…we do a little jamming. It’s generally really low-key. I’ve had a lot of big shows that have gone really well. Whether you can do it night in and night out…well, Springsteen manages it. It can be done.

Do you have a favorite place to do your song writing?

All I found about writing songs is whenever I say, ‘OK…this is a beautiful place, I’m going to write music there,’ I usually don’t write anything and I get pissed. I just basically do it at home. You find yourself getting busier and busier and you end up with small amounts of time. An idea comes to you one day and you have a bit of time to yourself, you sit at the piano…blah blah…you start it there. The next thing, you’ve just done an interview, and you’re in the car, you write something up. You’ve got to seize all these bits of time to write. It’s not like I have lots of time to sit around and say, ‘where shall I write a song?’ You write it on the move.

Of course, when it comes to this 30-year-old Welsh singer/songwriter, overnight success is a relative term. In his case it was a ten-year, four-album night culminating in the chart-climbing feats of his White Ladder album, courtesy of its alluring, hypnotic single, "Babylon."

Gray's first three albums — 1993's A Century Ends, 1994's Flesh and 1996's Sell, Sell, Sell — gained him a devoted following among such peers as Dave Matthews and Radiohead. He also earned sizable audiences in Europe, but scant attention in the U.S. His chances of grabbing American ears seemingly shot, Gray paid for the recording of White Ladder out of pocket and released the album on his own label, IHT, in early 1999.

Proving that it helps to have fans in high places, longtime admirer Matthews then picked up the album and re-released it on his own ATO Records label in March of 2000. White Ladder's 11 tracks mix acoustic guitars, piano and spare beats amidst Gray's warm vocals and lyrics about looking for love in all the wrong places.

Gray sat down with MTV Radio's Meridith Gottlieb to give her the lowdown on his slow climb up the ladder of success, why he thinks Morrissey should stop whining and the dangers of recording at home.
 

 MTV: What was the first record you bought?

David Gray: "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, in 1979. I just like it. Ridiculous song, really, but there you go.

MTV: What was the first concert you went to?

Gray: The Smiths in 1985, the Meat Is Murder tour. Morrissey was throwing plants around on the stage. I had a piece of weed that he had thrown into the audience, which I treasured for years — until I suddenly realized it was just a dried-out bit of weed.

MTV: Were you a big Smiths fan?

Gray: I was. I don't think they've aged very well. I was a big fan at the time. Everyone used to say, "God, it's so miserable, Morrissey's so miserable." And I would say, "No, it's brilliant." But I listen back and I think, "God, it's so miserable." Bands from that sort-of Manchester scene, like the Fall and New Order, aged so much better than the Smiths have. But I was a massive Smiths fan at the time, as most people were. It's almost like an underground cult thing now, the Morrissey fans. It's a bit like Cure fans — who are they? But there's loads of them.

The Smiths did a few brilliant tracks. "How Soon Is Now?" is an absolutely fantastic song, and a couple of the ballads that were far more stripped-down — "Back to the Old House" was a really good one. But when you hear something like "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want," you think, "Wait a minute, you were a pop star, with loads of money, playing big shows. What are you talking about?"

MTV: The experiences you went through, ultimately recording White Ladder out of pocket at home, would have made a lot of people to quit.

Gray: It wasn't so bad. It was a bit grim, that's for sure. But what can you do? I wouldn't want to do it again, but you've just got to come through it. I sort of lost sight of why I was making music, as if it is something that's connected to the commercial world. But I thought, "That's wrong; you just make music for music's sake." When I got back on track with that, it all started going well. But some of it was quite soul-destroying. I don't think I really admitted to myself how much I was hurting at the time. It would just manifest itself in these angry, edgy performances. [laughs].

MTV: Inspiration happens when things go wrong. It's probably toughest to write when things are great.

Gray: I don't go along with that at all. I think music will inspire you whether you're up or down. You don't become incredibly focused and creative because everything's going so wrong. I certainly was quite prolific while I was having a bad time. I was trying to make something positive out of the bad things that were happening, writing all of these very sad songs. But I don't think I'll be held back because everything's going so well when it comes to sitting down and writing.
 

MTV: If you hadn't told anyone White Ladder was recorded in your house, no one would know. That's amazing. Were there things that got in the way at home?

Gray: The cat was responsible for breaking two different pieces of equipment, which was massively annoying at the time, because we didn't have that much money. She climbed up on this keyboard that was precariously balanced on top of another keyboard, and we heard this almighty crash. She's a mad cat as well; she wasn't brought up properly. She's one of these cats that, if you start doing something, she immediately gets in your way. So she figured heavily in some of the recording. I think you can hear her on one of the tracks. And the neighbors got a little pissed off if we went on beyond a certain time. You get a bit of banging on the wall. But generally, it was all pretty easy.

Well, it wasn't easy in a technical, making-a-record way — that was actually a nightmare. We used someone's photography studio to record some drums in at one point, because it would have been too much of a bad vibe with the neighbors. The photographer had gone away and said we could use it, but the assistant — without telling the photographer — had booked his own sessions. We were trying to record drums and he was trying to do a shoot. We got so sick of waiting for them that we just did the take anyway. So we were recording drums and you can hear the photographer clicking away on the other side. We had to snip out bits where the phone would ring. It was a ridiculously haphazard recording process, fraught with technical problems, but it was quite nice to be making a record in that anarchical way. I enjoyed it, anyway. [RealVideo]

MTV: You wouldn't change the process?

Gray: I wouldn't go into a studio, I don't think, to make the next record. But we've made our own place, a really small studio. We've got a little live room, a little kitchen. The nice thing about making a record in your own space is, no one else comes and tampers with it, so the history of it keeps unfolding. There will be bits of tape stuck here with little notes on them, the desk has all kinds of writing on it, there's a cup of coffee over there, a bag of crisps here. The whole process takes over; it becomes somewhat of an organism. I like that general detritus, and the history of it.

When you're in the studio, you'll always have someone come in and tidy up after you. It's definitely their place and you're using it, and anyone can pop their head around the door and ask, "How's it going?" I don't like that. We like the privacy of just recording away. But I don't think I would do it at home again. It's nice to have some distance between your home life and your album. It was a bit stressful at times. [laughs]

MTV: Are you the type that constantly plays with ideas?

Gray: The last year or so has been so different from the rest of my career. When I put a record out before, I worked it for at least a month before it went off the radio and no one was interested in it. Then it was back to the drawing board to make another one. But I've been working this album for years. There's been so much promo and so many interviews. There's always things to do, from the moment I get up. On show days, there's soundcheck, and there's no room for creative thinking. I've found that my creative process has about stopped. But when I stop for a week or so, it starts again straight away.

MTV: When will you be on the road again here?

Gray: We start in April. It's a pretty big tour, about seven weeks of dates. We'll be coming through New York — Radio City Music Hall, a couple of nights there. The only other date I can remember is the L.A. Universal Amphitheatre. So they're going to be big shows. I'm really excited about it. It'll be brilliant.

MTV: You've gotten a lot of reaction about how "Babylon" has hit people in a soft spot. It's got to be a strange place to be in.

Gray: Well, that's brilliant. That's one of the nicest things about it. Once the music's done and out, it's somebody else's — everyone makes it up for themselves. I love the fact that people get so much enjoyment out of it.

MTV: "Please Forgive Me" looks like the next single. What was the inspiration for that track?

Gray: That was one where I got the chords messing around on my keyboard and I thought, "Oh, I got something here." I wrote the first line, and the whole song just sort of tumbled down in half an hour. I do love it when that happens; it doesn't happen very often. It seems like a very simple song — not so much about falling in love for the first time, but re-falling in love. It's a love song tempered by experience, but almost more passionate for the rediscovery.

It's rubbish talking about songs, because you make it sound less than actually just listening to the song. That is why I make music. The stuff that I don't understand — the magic that's in it — that's what I'm after.

www.mtv.com

Well, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Whether you’re bracing yourself for all-out attack, faint praise or total, sweet surrender, the follow-up to one of the great success stories of our young century is upon us. Four years on from his last album, White Ladder, David Gray and associates present A New Day At Midnight - 12 world class songs from a small room in south London – set for release through iht records/eastwest on October 28, 2002.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this was the difficult second album but in truth it is the (comparatively) painless sixth. Just to throw some context on the impact and scale of its predecessor, White Ladder is certified seven times platinum in the UK with sales of over 2.2 million accrued over more than 100 weeks in the Top 40. In Ireland, at the time of writing, the album has spent 175 weeks on the chart and is the biggest selling, non-compilation album of all time. Beyond statistics, the essence of White Ladder’s creation contributed to its unique status. Here was a record made at home after a series of thwarted excursions into the mainstream and certainly not one fashioned with a view to reaping success on such a scale; an album of unlikely and homespun origins whose instinctive honesty and simplicity found favour around the world. In America to date, two million copies have been sold and David received a Grammy nomination for ‘Best New Artist’ to compliment Ivor Novello and Q awards for the single ‘Babylon’ back home. Clearly its successor would never have the luxury of consensus, building on such dramatic terms.

So how do you follow that? Well, in this case you assemble the winning team: David Gray, his song writing partner and multi instrumental force of nature, Clune, and all-round studio visionary, Iestyn Polson, and repair to Iht’s Clapham studio (all 20 by 10 feet of it) and make the best damn record you can. The fruits of that labour (recorded intermittently in between spring 2001, after the end of touring in September that year, but chiefly in the months leading up to August this year) are certain to both surprise and defy expectations, while demonstrating that Gray’s talent has flowered on a par with his commercial success and that he is, without a doubt, a major force in contemporary music and songwriting.

From its opener, ‘Dead In The Water’, what strikes you is that this is far from an attempt to court success on easy, commercial terms. “The words to that song came one morning and they were a bit like the old me,” says David. “I wasn’t sure whether he was gonna resurface… they had a bit more of an edge to them. I became glad of it, but at the time I was a little bit unsure. It’s more like the old style ‘Birds Without Wings’/ ‘Let The Truth Sting’ approach… From the outset, it makes it distinctly different from White Ladder, which had a real lightness of touch.”

By the last track (and one hesitates to use the word ‘masterpiece’, but what the hell…), ‘The Other Side’, it’s equally clear that this is a serious record. If you can honestly say you love music and you love life, then you won’t be disappointed, which isn’t to say you won’t be surprised.

“After the huge success of White Ladder there was a certain amount of psychology involved with making this record,” says David. “It’s generally unhealthy to be concerning yourself too much with what other people might think. The task I faced was to get past all that, and get on with the job of writing and recording some music that articulated how I was thinking and feeling in the here and now. When recording started there were lots of songs lying around from the previous few years. I really believed that they were important songs, singles, whatever. Hardly any of them made it. As soon as the new songs started to come there was a freshness and a mystery to the recording process that the older songs couldn’t bring. Just for a little while, a new song is free of all that ‘being important’, ‘commercially viable’ crap that you make up in your head. When you first sing it, you sing it innocently, and it’s at that point that you’ve got to nail it. It’s great when it happens, but, of course, like most things, it doesn’t always work out that way. I kept writing right up until the mix, and songs like ‘The Other Side’ were recorded only a few days before we stopped.

There wasn’t time to sit around procrastinating. I finished up the lyrics, and we recorded the whole thing in a couple of hours. It’s those instinctive, unselfconscious moments that for me are the strongest parts of any record. They don’t arrive by magic, they’re more a by-product of hard work. If I had to say the record has a theme, it would be one of loss really. As the title expresses, there’s a vividness to life even at the bleakest, darkest, moments. Those are the times when you get the most out of other people. It’s as though the poignancy of the thing almost gives you a lightness. You feel free of all the stupid shit. You kind of see life and people and what they’re good for… The key cog of the whole thing is that people die and they don’t come back but remnants of them resurface and re-occur and catch you off guard, and it’s not always an easy thing to come to terms with. I’m just doing what I do. It’s not that there’s been a decision made to go in this direction, that’s just the way it’s gone. The ‘pop songs’ that were hanging about didn’t seem to be ringing true there wasn’t enough substance there. Suddenly they weren’t where I was at and I needed to express what I’d been through.”

So what we have here then is a classic, creative paradox, a life-affirming record hewn in the name of mortality. And not one unleavened by lighter moments either. Whilst the tone of White Ladder has shifted, the simplicity of it’s sound and structure are retained. Something that is due in part to using a studio that’s as close to home (in size if not in terms of technology) as you’re going to find. “It is funny using such a tiny studio,” says David. “There are limitations to that. You can’t get a piano in there for one thing, so you do your take on a digital. By contrast any little stupid instrument we bought seemed to feature, from dulcimer ‘Be Mine’ to toy piano ‘Last Boat to America’, melodica ‘Kangaroo’, and dodgy old synths and keyboards. One day we decided we’d hire a steel drum and play it ourselves. But it is just a big can with dents in it. You need 20 to make the sound blend into a sympathetic whole. With one, replicated over and over again, it just sounds horribly out of tune, it sounded fucking terrible! That was a waste of a day. This record sounds a whole lot bigger and deeper than White Ladder did. This time, at least, we had some decent microphones so we could record the drums properly. It’s been done to a higher level but it still feels home made. We just decided that that’s our vibe at this point in time. I’m not arsed about making some super-clean sounding studio record. I like the lo-fi quality. We just took up where we left off [with White Ladder]. Once you’ve got all your anxieties out of your system, it’s the same old process, it’s a simple thing.” Steel drums apart.

So, what could have simply been the next step on the career path, reveals itself instead to be something far more singular. An event and a piece of work in its own right. A record about change and loss that is anything but a linear progression from its predecessor, and one made for a million ears to hear but that emerges infused with intimacy and that plays and was built by its own rules.

David Gray throws his acoustic guitar for a loop and climbs to the top of the charts.

  Sometimes, the best way to find out who you really are is by trying to be something you’re not.  At least that’s the way it worked out for David Gray, who stumbled into the warm, semi-acoustic sound of his hit album, White Ladder only after trying to reinvent himself as a balls-out rocker.

 It was the mid-Nineties, and Gray- a London-born, Welsh-bred singer-songwriter who’d turned pro only at the beginning of the decade—already had two albums under his belt.  Although neither A Century Ends or Flesh had sold particularly well, they’d earned him a sheaf of good review as well as some high-profile fans, including Dave Matthews and the members of Radiohead.  Clearly, it was time to take his career to the next stage; the question was how?

 “I was sort of plodding away, trying to find my own sound,” he says.  “Nirvana were probably the main thing then, and so, influenced by that more extreme kind of sound, I persuaded myself that perhaps the rockier side of things was worth pursuing.”  So Gray strapped on his electric, cranked up his amplifier, and made Sell Sell Sell, the album that was supposed to catapult him into the big leagues.

 But a funny thing happened.  Not only did Sell Sell Sell fail to make Gray a star—in fact, it was deleted almost immediately after its release in this country—it caused him to swear off electric guitar altogether.  “I knew absolutely that it wasn’t worth persuing, because it just didn’t suit my style,” he says.  “All the best things on the record, just about, were the more intimate moments.  That’s where my strength lies—with the more intimate, stripped-down songs where I can turn a phrase or suck the listener in.”
 “So I made a decision to move away from that sound.  I wasn’t going to have any electric guitar on the next record.  Also, I was frustrated with the sort of standard band setup.   We’d given it a go, but there were other people doing it so much better.”

 In place of the adrenalized roar of alt-rock guitar, Gray found himself increasingly drawn to rhythm.  “There were quite a lot of ideas going around my head that were based on a drum groove, and quite stripped down,” he says.  “Maybe a bass line and a little bit of guitar, or a bit of atmosphere.  That was the way I was moving.”  It helped that drummer “Clune” McClune had become David Gray’s chief collaborator.  “Clune aided me in that direction, because he is more dance-based than rock based, and his natural feel is grooving the drums.  So we started to work together and I really enjoyed it.
 “Things came quite differently.  We used samples or drum machines, whatever.  But the grooves didn’t interfere with the song.  I mean, we did it quite subtly on the record.  Partly because we didn’t have any mikes for the drums, the drums got a quite small sound.  They don’t dominate- the voice dominates.  Whereas with two electric guitars thrashing away, it just choked all the space up, and you don’t get as close to the song.”

 Gray admits that he wouldn’t have been able to do this kind of writing without keyboards.  “When I write on the keyboard, I’m open to so much more rhythm,” he says.  “There’s more space to chords on the keyboard, and that leaves so much more room for the drums or bass or whatever.  So a groovier kind of beat would be more applicable that it would be on the guitar.
 “But with guitar, the song is more complete,” he adds.  “When you start with a sound, it sort of begs for a rhythm.  With guitar, there’s already a lot of rhythm and percussion already in it.  You’re kind of self sufficient.”

 Acoustic guitar was, in fact, the starting point for Gray’s musical career.  A friend started playing when the two of them were teens, and “it seemed so easy, really,” Gray recalls.  “My dad had one that was just lying around in the house, so I picked that up.  He wrote some chords down, and that was the beginning basically.  I mean it’s quite an easy instrument to learn.  You get sort of immediate results, albeit a little finger pain.”

 Even though he took to the instrument quickly, Gray never considered himself a guitarist per se, and he never had any guitar heroes.  “I suppose I listened to Dylan,” he says grudgingly.  “Dylan is a reasonable guitar player; I suppose he inspired me a little.  But I’ve found more inspiration in writing songs and singing.
 “I’m a rhythm guitar player.  I just strum.”  In that sense, White Ladder was a departure for Gray because it found him putting down his pick and playing more with his fingers.  “What happened was, I’ve learned to play softer,” he says.  “Playing live, you rend to get a bit overexcited at times and thrash away like a madman.  But when you’re in the quiet of the studio, and there aren’t thousands of people shouting, it generally sounds better when you hit the guitar softer.  It rings sweeter.
 “So I’ve learned to use less pick and more fingers.  And I’m a terrible guitar picker!  But I keep on because I prefer the sound of me stumbling about with fingers and a thumb to the rather nagging sound of a plectrum strumming away.  Strumming takes all the room up in the music.  It’s basically a percussive thing, and I was looking for more space.  And I was playing gentler on this record, and singing more gently too.  That’s sort of how I adapted.  The plectrum took a back seat.”

 He may be playing more softly, but Gray insists that the guitar remains the dominant instrument on White Ladder.  “It’s fairly to the fore on most of the tracks,” he says.  “The guitar is the main rhythm instrument.  Obviously, there’s more sampling and loops to this record than to my previous records.  But I don’t think I’ve changed the way I play.”

 Perhaps that’s why Gray finds it funny to hear his album described as “dance-y.”
 “The only people who thing it’s that way are those with absolutely no knowledge of dance music,” he says, chuckling.  “I mean that in a nice way.  But dance music means just something with a beat.  So if you add a house music bass line, like we have in songs like Please Forgive Me, they assume that’s dance music, because it’s using a sound they associate with dance music.  But anyone in dance music wouldn’t consider what we do to be ‘dance’ music in any way.”

 Like a lot of dance music, White Ladder was recorded using a computer and sampler—described by Gray as “The two biggest developments in the sound of music in the late 20th century”—but those tools merely helped Gray and Clune shape the material.  But the songs themselves remain rooted in the flesh-and-blood immediacy of emotion.

 “The whole idea is that songwriting is this transparent thing where the details are believable enough that you think, ‘Oh God, I remember feeling like that,’” he says.  Obviously, the emotions that flood through my life come out in the songs.  And also emotions I haven’t had yet.  It’s kind of a strange process.  But it’s not as simple as ‘Dave went out, fell in love, and this song is about that.’  It’s just that I tend to write love songs.  That’s what I write.”

 In Gray’s views, what matters most isn’t specifics of his inspiration but its clarity.  “Please Forgive Me,” which is more about a specific feeling rather than a particular person, is a case in point.  “These were really raw emotions captured,” he says.  “That one is just charged with some kind of electricity.  I wrote the lyrics in 20 minutes flat.  Then the recording was made in just a couple of hours.  So the whole thing was captured so fresh.
 “What beams out of that song is its spontaneity,” says Gray.  “It’s just brimming with emotion—I think I was bursting with it at the time.  So, both the freshness of the lyrics and the freshness of the performance make it totally convincing.  It’s one of my favourite things, definitely.”

 Gray’s fondness for working quickly is also reflected in a mostly acoustic album, Lost Songs, scheduled for American release later this year.  Consisting of material written between Sell Sell Sell and White Ladder, it’s less an album and more of a time capsule.  “Because of the turmoil in my career and that time, there was never a record made,” he says.  “And I doubt that anyone would have wanted to make a ‘me and my guitar’ record anyway.
 “But it’s a document of songs that I didn’t want to get lost and be left behind.  Because I knew that when White Ladder was finished with, I wouldn’t be feeling like going basically backwards and sorting out my archive material.”

 Although Gray describes the album as “very melancholy and low-key,” it is actually more of a professional production that the homemade White Ladder.  “Whereas White Ladder was recorded at my house, Lost Songs was recorded at a proper studio,” he says.  “A very cheap one, but a proper studio, with an assortment of mics. A big mixing desk and a tape operator.”

 Gray went the studio route for technical reasons.  “We wanted it to be easy to mic the band up, basically, and that’s something we couldn’t do with our setup at home,” he says.  “We just wanted to go in and play live, and that’s what we did on Lost Songs.  Either I laid the track down, just me and the guitar, or the band sat in and we went for the live takes, with the vocals and everything.
 “I wanted a kind of moment in time, a more old-style recording technique.  And it was a very subtle, simple, acoustic record.  Just a bit of performance basically, to focus the whole thing.”

 On Lost Songs, Gray mostly relied on his beloved 1961 Martin 000-18.  “I bought that when I got my first publishing deal,” he says.  “It just sounds so sweet.  I mean, acoustic guitars are quite wild, boomy things when you get them in front of a mic.  But with this Martin, it’s as if it’s calmed down with age.  Must be the wood or something.  Anyway, everything about it just fantastic.”
For White Ladder, however, Gray opted to go with his Lowden. "It's an Irish guitar I bought about six years ago," he says. "And though it's battered and bruised by my brutal treatment, it's got a really sweet sound. When I first got it I wasn't that enamoured with it. Then, one of my other guitars broke on a tour and I had to use to Lowden as a main guitar. Ever since I've started playing it, it's been very, very good. It has a completely different sound. It's very boomy- it has a massive body on it."
Gray and Clune recorded the guitar very simply, often just using a single mic, and then assembled the tracks on computer.  “We didn’t have much equipment—it was very primitive—but you can do a phenomenal amount with a sampler and a computer these days,” he says.  “White Ladder and Lost Songs were both incredibly cheap to make.”  He contemplates the results, then laughs.  “We must be the most cost-effective outfit in the business at the moment.”

Article by J. D. Considine, 2001
Transcribed by Chris Campbell, 2002
Article originally appeared in Guitar World Acoustic #41, 2001

VH1 David Gray Interview

VH1.com caught up with David Gray in a Portland, Ore., hotel, near the start of his U.S. tour in support of White Ladder. Helpful hipsters that we are, we assisted him in finding the latest English soccer scores on the Net; he in turn, talked to us about his album, his hard-won European success, and the music he loves.
VH1.com: The story of your success in Europe is fairly atypical for an artist these days.

David Gray: It's taken a lot of people by surprise, myself included. But it's like, why not? If you make something of spirit, it just goes out into the world and starts creating ripples. I just didn't realize the scale it was g