“The knives are always out!” David Gray emerges from a few years in the shadows to a sell-out tour and chats to Ruth Seavers.
Gold In A Brass Age is David Gray’s 11th record in his 26-year recording career. The album’s title is taken from a line from the “Kafka-esque” short story Blackbird Pie by Raymond Carver, which contains a startling moment where the wife takes her bag and walks out to a front garden entirely covered in fog and surrounded by horses. “It’s a very Raymond Carver kind of thing,” he says, “which shakes everything else away. And when the police take her away in the car, they tooted, they actually tooted, ‘words like that are gold in a brass age’,” Carver wrote.
Gray’s fourth album White Ladder was released in 1998 and was a slowburning success, taking until summer 2001 to top the UK charts. “But it’s important to try not to romanticise too much,” he says. “Unquestionably things have changed. I look at my kids, and they listen to a lot of grime or r’n’b. I can’t stand things with ‘bitch’ and ‘pussy’ and all this stuff. I just find it unlistenable, I’m afraid.
“But they don’t dress like The Specials did or like Paul Weller or the Sex Pistols. There’s no statement. And that tells you a lot about what’s happened with how we identify with music and what it was there for. Back then it was like you had to choose which team you were on all the time. It’s not like that anymore.”
Gray wanted to try something new and challenge the way he made songs. “I just love the tang on the unknown. I’ve come to really appreciate how important it is to not quite know what you’re doing.” Trying to do something he hasn’t done before has become his default position. And thinking that better things are likely to happen outside of your normal artistic comfort zone is something that is constantly pressed upon young musicians.
“It’s all about catching yourself off-guard and getting something better than what your conscious mind can give you. Letting something happen that’s more from the gut, more instinctive, to find something further beyond than the way your brain might design it. From the heart, really… that’s what you’re looking for.”
Did he always see music as a viable option? A lot of people and parents would think of it as a pipe dream. He starts laughing: “I was born with a natural innate self-confidence and audacity and a need to ‘make things’. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or how things were going to end up. And it’s the same game. If you want to play the game your way, you’re going to have to put up with its ups and downs. You’ve got to do something you believe in and eventually, that carries some weight.”
So does that mean he’s nervous about what critics have to say? “Don’t get me wrong, it hurts like hell,” he says; “you put something that you treasure out into the world – it’s like you’re sending your kids to school on the first day. And the knives are always out, as Bruce Springsteen says. They have to back horses. This one’s a grand national, this one’s going to pick up a few medals.
“It’s to do with all the identifying that goes on within culture of choosing what’s important. But miracles do happen. Things can catch hold without the sanction of the gatekeepers. Things have their own force, but who knows when that El Niño effect is going to kick in.”
The greatest yardstick for this kind of “vibe” he talks about, is ticket sales. And his Gold In A Brass Age tour is already sold out, so it’s safe to say David Gray has been riding the El Niño for quite some time.
David Gray, St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, Fri 15 Mar. Tickets: from £32 (sold out – check box office for returns). Info: 029 2087 8444 / www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk