Through days like empty fields after the harvest / This ache where the heart is / Like a tree that’s bare, ’neath a sky that’s starless / Like something out of place / I feel all used up, I feel tarnished / Like smudged eyeliner, chipped nail varnish / Like something scarcely visible garnished / With a face …
Audacious rhymes cascade over glitchy electronic beats and shimmering acoustic guitars. A soulful, yearning voice reaches for the skies.
David Gray is back doing what he does better than almost anyone, and fans of complex, serious, lyrical songcraft should rejoice. Dear Life may be the deepest, strangest, loveliest album this pioneering British singer-songwriter has ever delivered. Years in the making, it is an album of emotional crisis and resolution, mortality and faith, reality and illusion, love and heartbreak, magic, science, loss and acceptance.
According to its creator, “A lot has happened to me. There’s been change on so many levels, all the ups and downs and dramas and tragedies and joys that the slow movement through life brings. This record has been a reckoning with stuff that’s been building up like static for years. But I say this with joy and a smile on my face. I know what I’ve done is as good as anything I could possibly do.”
For a multi-million selling arena artist who made one of the bestselling British albums of the 21st century, David Gray is perhaps a little misunderstood. The blockbuster White Ladder (first released in 1998 on his own kitchen sink IHT label) took years to break through, pushing his intense and passionate blend of acoustics and electronica into the pop spotlight. After Gray came the singer-songwriter deluge: Ed Sheeran has admitted “White Ladder moulded me as an artist and a fan.” But whilst huge stars from Adele to Hozier have acknowledged Gray’s profound impact and influence, Gray himself has continued to plough his own furrow, relentlessly seeking out a purity of artistic expression. The work matters deeply to him. “What I want is something that when you touch it, you know it’s real,” is how David puts it.
Dear Life is Gray’s 13th album, featuring 15 new songs. It is the result of “a starburst of songwriting … it just seemed like the gods of songwriting were being kind. The doubting voices didn't turn up.” He “relished the whole writing process, the words were ravishing to me, the rhyming schemes were fresh and new.” By his own admission, it is his “most lyrical record” but working closely with producer Ben de Vries, he was determined to ensure that “the music makes space for the words. Everything is very melodically strong and positive, so the record isn’t overly wordy, or dense or inward looking.”
Dear Life contemplates “the beautiful thing that we all treasure,” with a suggestion of a formal address - as if the writer is composing a letter to life itself. Some songs tenderly grapple with relationship choices and consequences (“After The Harvest”, “Sunlight on Water”, “The First Stone”), some face mortality and loss (“Eyes Made Rain”, “Leave Taking”, “That Day Must Surely Come”), some boldly tackle the biggest questions of existence: the unknowable nature of love (“I Saw Love”), our place in the universe (“The Only Ones”), the prospect of apocalyptic change (“Future Bride”). There is a playfulness at work (“Singing for the Pharaoh” finds Gray wittily interrogating his vocation, whilst “Fighting Talk” confronts his Celtic argumentativeness) and a strong female presence throughout, with vocals from David’s musician daughter Florence Gray on several songs, and a punchy duet with rising star Talia Rae on first single, “Plus & Minus.”
David Gray is a songwriter’s songwriter, one of those rare artists who can express themselves as fully through lyrics as through melody, a richly poetic wordsmith with vast musical flair. Dear Life is a big statement, the work of a driven man obsessively focussed on a personal artistic journey. “I'm feeling very joyful about the act of making and sharing this music - and privileged to be doing so. But also strengthened - because I know that what I've done is as good as anything I can possibly ever do. I don’t know what people will make of it. But I have the same hopes and dreams whenever I release a record - that if you try and do something special, then maybe something magical will happen in return.”
