David Gray - A Century Ends

After a busy couple of weeks in the studio, here I am back again to talk about some more music (another Cheap Seats installment should be issuing forth pretty soon as well).  I first got into David Gray since seeing him live in 2001 when he was just breaking through with White Ladder.  Since then I've stayed a fan as his popularity has ebbed and flowed, but it wasn't White Ladder that cemented my support--it was Gray's back catalog, and especially Flesh and A Century Ends, his 1993 debut.

Though Gray's first couple albums display his liking for Van Morrison and Bob Dylan a lot more than his more recent stuff, they're also a lot more focused on pure songwriting than fusing electronic and accessible acoustic elements than his breakthrough albums are.  The arrangements mostly center on Gray's acoustic guitar, though there's some uncharacteristically (for Gray's music) overdriven electrics that accentuate some of the album's edgier tracks.  What always draws me into A Century Ends is the fact that it's much angrier than Gray's later works--as he's matured his cynicism has often been re-routed into less recognizable forms as he strives to keep his music accessible and prolong his mainstream popularity.  Here, though, Gray rails against the apathy and decline he sees in society on songs like "Let the Truth Sting," "Birds Without Wings" and the title track, singing in a sometimes growling brogue and spitting bile with every line.  Revisiting this album I occasionally feel that Gray's poetic lyrics are occasionally a bit florid and sound exactly like the kind of stuff an earnest, angry 24-year-old writes (which probably explains why I liked it so much when I was a teenager), but he repeatedly delivers goods that offer insight beyond his years with lines like "when the cat comes/we're just birds without wings."

Also noticeable throughout the set is a sort of dingy grit that comes with the life of a frustrated young artist--"Debauchery," "Living Room" and "Wisdom" abound with grimy urban imagery and a sense of urgent desperation that rarely appears in Gray's works these days.  This might be most evident on the quietly simmering "Lead Me Upstairs," which focuses the album's themes of innocence lost and disillusionment into the image of a single romantic encounter.  What really balances Gray's youthful angst, though, is a few unassumingly gorgeous tracks that blend the singer's exuberance with an open-ended bittersweetness and depth that's occasionally lacking on some of the collection's more straightforward material.  The opener, "Shine" continues to be one of Gray's finest heartbreak songs, based on open-tuned guitar and rising to a crescendo that sees the singer experimenting with Van Morrison-like vocalizations.  "Gathering Dust," further develops a quiet sense of searching, featuring one of the album's most memorable melodies (delivered by Gray's wordless na-na-na's).

While it's probably true that A Century Ends presents some of David Gray's least mature material, it's also refreshing to hear someone singing passionately and obviously caring about the subject matter, even if the wide-eyed sincerity of youth is a little overly-apparent.  And while the music sometimes suffers the characteristic fate of existing merely as a platform for Gray's voice and lyrics, he does present us with a lot to enjoy in those departments.  I've heard Gray speak mildly disparagingly about his first few albums and say that the too-familiar folk rock arrangements were part of the reason he didn't achieve success before White Ladder (not to mention that this album is a way too British-sounding to find widespread success overseas).  That may be true, but listen to both albums in 10 years (or maybe even now) and I bet this collection sounds a whole lot more difficult to date in comparison.  While Gray has continued to tread middle-of-the-road territory with his recent albums, he always seems to show glimmers of the insight and un-poplike impulses that made his early stuff so compelling.  He's got his fair share of detractors who validly point out his overplay and recent blandness at the expense of recognizing his well-developed craft, but I live in hope that his continuing maturity and subtlety will again result in something that aims to challenge more than it does generate another safe adult contemporary hit.  A taste of success seems to often instigate a hunger that's fraught with compromise, and that feeling is never evident on A Century Ends.

Get it here.