DAVID GRAY | LIVE REVIEW
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Fri 15 Mar
In Gold In A Brass Age, David Gray took a whole new approach to writing music, he says. He paired meaningful phrases with melodies, more organically, rather than the more traditional approach he has taken up until now. And the result is something truly beautiful and ghostly, reminiscent of his earlier days.
Tonight, he starts the show with work he hasn’t yet released, and it all sounds immediately catching. He starts promptly: arrives on stage, greets Cardiff. Everyone remains seated. There’s not many in the audience below 35.
It is hard to escape the success of 1999’s White Ladder, the album which elevated him to his pop culture peak. Anyone who grew up in that era will find the opening bars as familiar as beach water on your toes. It’s regressive. Melancholic, nostalgic. Someone you fell in love with is probably associated with it. Let’s not talk about This Year’s Love (it’s number one on his Spotify). And that sense of lost love is very present in the room as Sail Away comes on. The lasting impact of its rawness, still bare. Tinted a bit now too, with the sadness of the passage of time.
It’s funny watching Gray perform now. When he wrote White Ladder he was only in his late 20s. Now, in interviewing him before the show, he’s endearingly close to the “grumpy dad” stereotype. Even though he is a lauded artist in his own right. You can’t help but imagine him scruffy haired and yawning, shuffling in his slippers, trying to get his kids up for school – who really don’t care how many albums he’s sold. “This song has a whole new meaning now that I have to wake up two teenagers in the morning,” he says, as he starts singing Wake Up.
Alternating between the piano and a stand-up mic, taking different instruments and using a loop pedal, he truly is a solo act – although there are accompaniments, this is the David Gray Show. The backing musicians seem to dissolve a little while he sings, the lighting in the background dancing and orphic.
Everyone is completely encapsulated – a fanbase which has matured with the artist. And it’s always both a delight and relief when such an established artist delivers with their latest work; in Gold In A Brass Age David Gray definitely has.
words RUTH SEAVERS photos GARETH GRIFFITHS