It's almost inconceivable that someone can produce a top
Ibiza sound, a seven-times Platinum album, a popular film soundtrack and have a
cult following in Ireland and North America, yet still remain largely unknown
back home. But such is the dubious achievement of Manchester-born,
Pembrokeshire-raised, London-based singer David Gray, who is hoping to make his
mark on the British CD-buying public with the re-release next week of his fourth
album, White Ladder.
Originally released as a self-financed album in Ireland 18 months ago, the
record already has fans: Radio 1's Mark Radcliffe and music guru Jo Whiley have
voiced their approval. And Orbital's Paul Hartnoll liked the track Please
Forgive Me so much he remixed it, securing the Record of the Week slot on
Pete Tong's Essential Selection show which in turn ensured massive
exposure in Ibiza and on London's club scene.
It is not simply a great dance track, though. According to Gray, "people
use the song to get over their break-ups: it's a reliable piece of emotion that
you can touch base with. There's melancholy there but it's a comforting thing to
have around, like talking to a friend. We've all been through stuff that's gone
wrong."
Gray's certainly had his fair share of strife. His parents split up just
after he got married and around that time his career "went completely
pear-shaped". Songwriters are deft at turning bad experiences into great
songs, however, and Gray is no exception. White Ladder, he confides, is a direct
result of "coming out of that spectre of doubt towards hope." If
that's sounding ponderous, Gray is refreshingly relaxed about the creative
process itself.
Of the inspiration behind Please Forgive Me, he recalls: "It came
from absolutely nowhere, just popped out of thin air. We had a party, we drank
lots of wine and I was a bit pissed, but I sneaked off to my little home studio.
I had this chord sequence straight away and this thing just happened with the
drum machine. The lyrics just showered down." An emotional outpouring,
clearly, but not one Gray feels unduly possessive of. "There's a feeling
that informs [the song] which is bigger than I am", he demures. "It's
ridiculous to claim authorship of these things. Anything that's worth anything
in life is bigger than you."
Hartnoll has a slightly different take on what makes Gray's music special.
"The emotional quality of what David does is the key element," he
says.
"White Ladder has the ability to charm people," Gray concurs. It
certainly seems to have charmed Robbie Williams who asked Gray to support him at
his Slane Castle gig last summer, and it obviously won over the Irish who bought
100,000 copies of the album and kept it at Number One for six weeks.
"It's worked on a word of mouth basis," Gray explains. "You
don't get enough of that in this world and I now get the distinct impression
it's about to be shoved down people's throats." Gray is referring to the PR
onslaught with which his new record company, East West, is about to hit America.
A David Letterman interview is already lined up for June.
It's a far cry from Gray's earlier record deals which proved almost more
trouble than they were worth. Signed to Virgin's subsidiary Hut label in 1992,
Gray learnt the hard way. "I was only 23 and I don't think they knew how to
present the two albums I made. But that was a breeze compared to what happened
at EMI America. That was being mangled, the record didn't even come out properly
as the label was imploding. After that, I was at a crossroads."
A total fluke led to Gray contributing to the soundtrack of the movie This
Year's Love, the critically acclaimed but commercially low-key British romantic
comedy. The money he earnt from that enabled him to make White Ladder without a
record company (Gray's own label, IHT Records, originally produced the album).
He had begun embracing new ways of working. "Partly for practical
reasons, we started using a drum machine," he says. "All these sounds
had been knocking on my ears for so long but I realised the songs had to grow
out of the samples. Technology and songwriting have grown apart and only Beth
Orton and Beck have managed to bring them back together."
"That's why I find John Lennon and Bob Dylan so inspiring", he
continues. "They're vulnerable, raw, naked. My favourite albums are Van
Morrison's Astral Weeks and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, records that happened
when no one was in control. I suppose that's my philosophy. When I was first in
a band, it was just daft punk rubbish but as soon as I started to write, all
this melancholy stuff came out."
It seems that mood is never far away. "Being a singer is not a job like
a dentist," Gray asserts. "It's my lifeblood. I could have become a
bitter cynical twisted fucker à la Nick Drake – who's marvellous but
miserable – but I decided to give it everything."
"White Ladder" is released on East West on 1 May.
