David Gray

Tombo2001

This guy is a bit of a conundrum to me.

Its like the early part of his career and the later part are actually two different careers by two different people.

In the late 1990s, this guy had an intense, loyal following in Dublin and nowhere else as far as I remember. His gigs in places like Whelans or the Olympia were sell-outs and the crowd knew every word. He was being played by No Disco and Donal Dineen and John Kelly and so on. He was hip, and the following he had was probably quite comparable to the Frames. The albums he had were excellent.

Then he made it big overseas with White Ladder, in the UK and I imagine elsewhere. I thought White Ladder was great, as good as A Century Ends probably.

Anyway.....what happened next is not quite clear to me, but with a big hit internationally he obviously stopped playing Whelans, and more or less in Ireland. The next album he released was fierce non-descript (A new day at midnight, I think) and I never bought any of his albums after that, and couldnt name one of his songs from the past ten years.

So, I suppose I'm wondering.....is there anyone who has stuck with David Gray from when he was a hipster in Whelans in 1997 until today......because the crowd he plays to know seems to be closer to Rod Stewart fans than Frames fans......
...and is any of his more recent material in any way as good as A Century Ends?

GoldenTickets

Chronic whiplash is my guess as to why he's less active on the live circuit these days. You wouldn't see that kind of head rattling at a Slayer show.

Prettyblack

Probably because he went "commercial". So from being an acoustic troubadour with a gravelly voice and mad intensity, he mellowed out and captured the middle market with smooth, glossy AOR.

Nothing wrong with that either, after all he had years of commercial failure and being dropped from his label to deal with. But it did mean his music would change.

I know some people who LOVED his first few albums but wouldn't dream of listening to his new stuff. Similarly I know people who probably think White Ladder is his first album.

White Ladder was good, but that was the last decent thing he did. A Century Ends is still a very powerful album.