David Gray

The Songwriter Goes Prospecting For Creative Frontiers And Is Reborn Anew On Gold In A Brass Age

- Jonathan Horsley

Songwriting is a brutal art. There’s no practice schedule, no spiritual accommodations, no dietary regime and certainly no lucky underwear that’ll guarantee safe and swift passage for your every musical idea. Sure, some songs come easy. They’re the exception; you’ve got to be prepared to suffer. David Gray is. But then you get the impression he enjoys it.

Take Tight Ship, from his latest album, Gold In A Brass Age. Here was a puzzle that took 18 months to solve. “I had a million different ideas and they were all far too pretentious and up their own arse,” he laughs. As it happened, one line resolved the song lyrically and now it’s on the album. That’s songwriting for you. It takes as long as it takes. Little wonder Gold... was four years in coming.

Written and recorded while touring 2016’s The Best Of… compilation, it was produced by Ben de Vries, whose father, Marius, worked with Gray on 2005’s Life In Slow Motion. It feels like a fresh start. The electronic elements that have long augmented Gray’s arrangements are more experimental, his lyrics more opaque, open to interpretation. But the biggest change is with Gray himself.