David Gray

30 | November 27, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

The Babylon singer is back with a new sound and apparently a brand new heart. ELLA WALKER finds out more about his mutinous new direction

Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk For breaking entertainment news for the city, visit cambridge-news. co.uk/whatson Follow @CamWhatsOn on Twitter

“There’s a new heart thundering away in my chest”

David Gray:

Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | November 27, 2014 | 31

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC HOT WHAT’S ON David TICKETS Gray, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Tuesday, December 3 WHAT’S ON HOT TICKETS at 7.30pm. Tickets £32-£50 from HOT TICKETS WHAT’S ON (01223) 357851 / cornex.co.uk.

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I

N our 20 minutes together, I count one joke and one laugh from David Gray – and the man is a talker.

Pauses were few, deep breaths rare and ‘erms’ and ‘umms’ not remotely in his vocabulary.

The joke you ask? It was no one-liner, it wasn’t even cracker worthy, just a wry quip when asked about the now famous, utterly out of character moment during which he threw a piece of furniture while writing his latest album, Mutineers: “It wasn’t Ikea so it hung together pretty well.”

No, it’s unlikely to break ribs or crack too many smiles, but this is David Gray: unnervingly sincere, intensely uninterruptable and straightforwardly professional.

It’s not cool (or funny) to be as sincere and heartfelt as David Gray, but the 46-year-old singer songwriter is not all that interested in being cool anyway.

Mutineers is his 10th studio album since the folk-rock tunes he began making in 1992 and 2000’s chart-crashingly, commercially successful – read: uplifting, catchy, bland – White Ladder (“[that] was just the bit when everyone sat up and paid attention”).

Now, after a four-year break, the dad of two has disentangled himself from the studio and is back on the road, stopping at Cambridge Corn

“I don’t make a record aiming at the top of the charts, I just make the record that I want to make and sometimes that’s a commercial success, and other times not so much” Exchange. When we speak he’s “reassembling myself after my epic American trip” and prepping for an acoustic gig in aid of Jo Wiley’s charity Little Noise.

Blunt in tone and lacking the shyness you’d expect from listening to his love-sick, introspective lyrics, he’s pragmatic about his career’s longevity. “I just do what’s in my heart, that’s what my music is. I put everything out there, I don’t make a record aiming at the top of the charts, I just make the record that I want to make and sometimes that’s a commercial success, and other times not so much.”

At his height, Gray was raking in Brit and Grammy Award nominations, had three UK Number 1 albums and performed at Wembley.

Although he did garner about as much snide attention for how much he shakes his head

when he sings (to be fair, in the video for Babylon it is quite a lot). Mutineers hasn’t been propelled into radio chart lists or irritated the hell out of everyone circa 2000, but it is, he says “one of the most powerful records” he’s made. “On the heartfelt side, the passion of the thing, the intensity of it and the zest of it, I think it’s got all the right ingredients.”

And whether Radio 1 or 2 picks it up, isn’t really his concern: “If it moves into a sonic area that people aren’t as charmed by then so be it, but for me I find it an exciting development and I’m probably going to be pushing further out this way.”

On the record he decided, having grown “bored” of himself (“Ideas exhaust themselves.

You find yourself repeating formulas if you stay in the game long enough,”), to team up with producer Andy Barlow (Lamb, Elbow, Damien

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32 | November 27, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: David is moving towards the poetic side for his music

Rice), and that’s where the furniture trashing came in.

“It was just a part of the frustration,” Gray explains. “There was a lot of tension and lively discussion, argument, and that was a part of making the record because I gave the producer access to what I was doing and he smashed things up in order to make something new. But I found it quite a harrowing process, particularly when he was breaking things, and I didn’t know what we were going to make instead.

“I can be a slightly combative personality, I’ve got ready opinions and they’re robust opinions and I’ll say them straight away – that’s how I am – I’m plain spoken, but this was different. This was the level of personal upheaval that was required to break me and the music open and let something else happen.”

The result is a record that melds the soaring of birds with the blaze of new beginnings. It’s not the kind of album you might have expected from a guy whose building blocks to this point looked to be leading towards “that deflated, rather jaded, cynical 40-something take [on life] set to music”.

“I didn’t want to just be vaguely complaining about the world and poeticising about it,” says Gray earnestly. “I wanted to make a statement and for there to be a sense

“The fact is I’d be alienating myself if I carry on making music that I don’t believe in, so I don’t really have any choice in the matter. It’d all grind to a halt if I was just trying to fit something in to a certain hole that was to do with something that somebody else wanted”

of epiphany and uplift, that’s what I was after, some sense of elation and I didn’t want to just be drably putting down middle-aged observations. I wanted my music to do something more, to drag me out of myself and wake me up to how wonderful life is really.”

That sounds glib, but Gray means it sincerely. Some of his phrasing does slip into the cringeable (“there’s a new heart thundering away in my chest with this new music,”), but in fact, the man has got his passion back, and Mutineers signals “the end of a cycle of records”. It seems to have worked, this smashing up, and even if you hated the sonorous wranglings of White Ladder, there are kernels on this album that still might appeal.

There are guitars, there are bass notes, the first single, Back In The World, actually sounds ballsy (in a sad, emotional kind of way – you can’t overhaul everything you know).

Did he worry about alienating his die-hard fans? “No, not at all. I don’t think it’s so radical that it’s a threat to their enjoyment but you never know; what one person likes, another person doesn’t,” Gray muses. “The fact is I’d be alienating myself if I carry on making music that I don’t believe in, so I don’t really have any choice in the matter. It’d all grind to a halt if I was just trying to fit something

in to a certain them live for the first time. It hole that was to do was a real adventure,” with something Gray remembers, WHAT that somebody noting Gulls and ARE YOU else wanted.”

Beautiful Agony LISTENING TO? He’s as particular “I’ve enjoyed a huge amount of quick to favourites. “It’s Bill Callahan’s music over the last clarify that great stepping four or five years, so that’s definitely doesn’t off into the an inspiration for me. I hear the music mean unknown my kids listen to, the pop music of he feels because songs today, from Katy Perry to Avicii to regret become so . . . I don’t even know half of it. The about worryingly clamorous racket that is today’s his past familiar at pop music. They’re into Ed albums (the times with the Sheeran at the moment, word ‘regret’ repetition of unsurprisingly.” actually playing them at puts him in hundreds of concerts. a rather huffy, To be doing something contradictory mood): terrifyingly new and not “No no no, they’re each really knowing how it’s all steps to the next thing, so it’s not going to hang together was a thrilling that I look back and I’m bored of the experiencing. I love those moments.” things I did before. It’s that I didn’t While still immersed in these new want to do another one of those songs, Gray can’t help but tinker again. mentally with ideas for what he’s “I don’t really look back in that going to do next. “I’m wondering way anyway. I find that I accept the where my music might go to,” he things that happened even if I made admits. “If you look at a painter’s a record that I decided afterwards I progression from figurative art was unhappy with. It’s not like I go through to abstraction, it’s like that, around regretting it the whole time. the path of my music. I’m moving It’s just what happened because towards the poetic side of it in its you’re human and things get in the purest form.” way.”

Cheesy – and a touch pretentious Anyway, he’s still buzzing off the – but it seems to be working for him new tracks. “It was wonderful playing so far.