David Gray - A New Day At Midnight

With his trusty companion and multi-instrumentalist, Clune, David Gray forged ahead of the bittersweet pop masses with White Ladder, and created something that everyone, broken-hearted folks to commercial media, could stake their claim in. One can only imagine the weight the professedly Welsh singer-songwriter had to bear when stepping back into the studio to record the follow-up, A New Day At Midnight. Quite a big set of expectations laid upon David Gray for what is seemingly just another day and another batch of his trademark melancholy. From the opening seconds of "Dead In The Water" it's evident that Gray and Clune have not adopted a new approach to songwriting. The water-down dance backbeats accompanied by Gray's distinctive warble is what sold White Ladder, why change it? Still, as the track slides into the chorus and "we're dead in the water now" is uttered, Gray's honesty comes shining through. If it's one thing that the American public can claim, it's that we, for the most part, have a good set of bullshit censors. Perhaps why Gray is so successful is that it's hard to believe that he's somehow just conjuring up all of this from some fictional wonderland. Try the longing in "Real Love", the heartbreak of "Freedom," or the dreary "December" on for size and then have a go at accepting it any other way. After borrowing a couple lines from "Into The Mystic" and "Madam George" for "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" on White Ladder, it might be safe to assume that Gray contends to be the Van Morrison of his generation. However, as most everything in music today is derivative of something, it might just be better to not think about things so much. With light, minimal arrangements of acoustic guitar, piano or keyboard powdering "Last Boat To America", "The Other Side" and the majority of this album, Gray may have just created a simple frame to display his demons. The only question for you, the listener, being: are David Gray's woes worth paying attention to again? [www.davidgray.com]