As reliable as an old raincoat but still capable of reinvention, UK folk-rock mainstay David Gray has just returned with Dear Life, his first album in four years and a highlight of a catalogue spanning more than three decades. He’s back in Wales, the country of his upbringing, for a brace of March gigs too. Colin Palmer engaged David in conversation.
During the late 1990s and early into the millennium, there was one man who personified the British singer-songwriter: David Gray. An ambitious and self-propelled musician turned multi-million selling arena artist, Gray was born in Cheshire and grew up in Solva; between 1993 and 1996, he released three albums which were largely overlooked, with White Ladder making a fourth when it first arrived in 1998.
Its re-release in early 2000 did the trick, however, propelling White Ladder to widespread commercial and critical favour: singles chart success for one of its tracks, Babylon, proved a great help. What appeared to be an effortless blend of acoustic instruments and electronic samples put David on the map, but it hadn’t been plain sailing.
Almost a quarter of a century on from White Ladder’s enormous success – it’s one of the 10 best-selling albums in Britain in the 21st century – Gray has returned with Dear Life, his 13th studio album and a demonstration of his enduring mastery in crafting emotional, beguiling folk and rock music. Its mid-January release is being supported by extensive touring, first in the USA and then across the UK in March and April; dates in Swansea and Llandudno have sold out well ahead of time, as has most of the domestic leg.
The release of Dear Life turned out to be a protracted process, as Gray explains. “Well, it started in 2019 when I got off tour. I had these drum machines and things, and I started making these jam tracks and writing songs over the drum machines. We went into the studio and started work; I knew 2020 was going to be the White Ladder anniversary tour, so I knew there was going to be a limit to how much we would get done by the end of the year.
“I had a few new ideas coming, which we didn’t really crystallize into recording form, and then obviously what happened with COVID – two days off playing the first show, suddenly we had a two-year wait before we could play a show.”

Gray released an album during the pandemic, 2021’s Skellig, but says that the recording process for its successor – which became Dear Life – was dislocated because of the pandemic. “I basically downed tools,” he tells me. “I stopped working with any regularity or intensity, so I let the field go fallow creatively.
“I didn’t start up properly again until we had a Zoom call at the end of 2021 – when Omicron was happening – and there were so many tours in a holding pattern. So I suddenly had this time clear, and I started to write. That’s when this starburst of writing was happening! Then I had to do the whole tour, and after that I could get down to finishing this new record. Time was a great helper – it all enriched the process and decisions were taken that made the music stronger as a result – but the whole thing was dragged out over a long period.”
Lyrically, Dear Life is adventurous, literate and complete enough to visit repeatedly. “I think that if there’s anything that’s really obvious from a songwriting point of view, it’s the relish I had in the rhyming schemes and the structure of the lyrics,” Gray suggests of his latest opus. “I’ve always been wordy: I love the fabric and the substance of words, the sound of words, the music and the landscape of words. They are a place in themselves.
“But this was more like [Bob Dylan album] Blood On The Tracks-style writing. I was doing very ambitious rhyming schemes – mad things like going through the whole of I Saw Love doing the same rhyming scheme from start to finish. I love the writing process so much, but lyrics can be such a bind – they really are the hardest part of the job.”
Gray expands on Dear Life’s creative process. “It was a remarkable writing spurt that I had, November of 2021 through to April 2022. It wasn’t just that I was writing songs from scratch – which I was some of the time – I was picking up unfinished things and finishing them. Not just like some sort of homework assignment that I didn’t want to do! it was with real pleasure.
“To pick up the loose thread, you are in this sort of self-hypnotised suggestible state. And when you have a dream, or an idea comes into your life – you have the rhythm of the chords, a melody arises, the words arrive – you might have half an hour to work on it. You get a few lines down, and then you have to pick up the thread next week or tomorrow or whenever – when you’re on tour, that might not be for six months. It might be a year before you pick up the loose threads.
“It’s very hard to go back to that self-hypnotised state, so what was very unusual about the writing process this time was that I just managed to pick things up as if I had never been away, carried on, and finished them.”
Gray is returning to Wales in March as part of a three-month tour. “It’s called the Past & Present tour because I wanted to make it really obvious that you can expect to hear the big songs from my catalogue – Babylon, This Year’s Love, Please Forgive Me, Sail Away etc – but I feel these new songs are strong enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. So there’ll be a good swathe of new music mixed in, and also some deep dives into the past – the setlist will change enormously from night to night. We’ll focus on one particular album, maybe two, from the past each night – doing a dive into the past, playing the big songs, and honouring my new music. It’s going to be a highly energised show.
“I’m playing in Swansea instead of Cardiff, and I’ve never played this venue [Swansea Arena] before. I famously had a gig on the White Ladder tour in 1999 where I tried to play the Welsh card, and it didn’t really work out. Things were going well in Ireland, but I played in Swansea – I remember it was a Tuesday night, we were in a sort of railway arch in a small club and we were sitting backstage having sold 45 tickets and we had a walkup of minus 13. I’ve got unfinished business with Swansea.”
Chuckling at the memory. David Gray is clearly in good humour and high spirits ahead of the upcoming tour – safe in the knowledge he has written a new record that easily stands with his best work, and perhaps even surpasses it.
David Gray, Swansea Arena, Sun 16 Mar; Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Fri 28 Mar.
Tickets: from £44.50 (sold out). Info: Swansea / Llandudno
Dear Life is out now via Laugh A Minute.
words COLIN PALMER