David Gray has announced a third London show

David Gray has announced a third London show, adding a second night at the Palladium (May 10), as part of his extensive Past & Present Tour. This follows the swift sell-out of his shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall on May 3, and the Palladium on May 9, with the majority of his twenty-two UK & Ireland dates now sold-out. Presale tickets for the newly added Palladium show on May 10 will be available starting at 10am on Wednesday, October 16, with general ticket sales on-sale from 10am, Friday, October 18. Fans can access the presale by visiting www.davidgray.com/live. Gray’s highly anticipated new album, Dear Life, will be released on January 17, 2025, through his independent label Laugh A Minute Records, in partnership with Secretly Distribution. Possibly the deepest, strangest and loveliest album of his career to date, the album was recently launched alongside its lead single ‘Plus & Minus’.

David Gray’s story is unlike any other. He spent almost a decade striving to make a breakthrough, and when it happened it did so in the biggest way imaginable as White Ladder became one of the best-selling British albums of recent decades and established him as an arena-filling artist. As the years have passed, his songcraft has only been deepened by his natural ability to convey specific emotions, atmospheres or, as heard on his acclaimed 2021 album Skellig, a perception of place – all positioning him in the lineage of classic poetic singer-songwriters rather than lovestruck acoustic troubadours. While the likes of Ed Sheeran, Adele and Hozier have acknowledged his influence, David has continued to follow his own artistic path.

Dear Life is Gray’s thirteenth album. It’s the result of “a starburst of songwriting … it just seemed like the gods of songwriting were being kind. The doubting voices didn’t turn up.” An album of emotional crisis and resolution, mortality and faith, reality and illusion, love and heartbreak, magic, science, loss and acceptance. While it is full of yearning and hope, there is an undercurrent of darkness, a tension between competing forces of hope and despair: a cavalcade of emotions in what is his most lyrically-focused collection to-date.

Premiering on The Radio 2’s Breakfast Show, Dave’s new single, “Plus & Minus” catches the songwriter at his most immediately infectious. The song’s piano refrain frames a duet about a fractured relationship, in which his inimitable voice trades words of disillusionment and despair with newcomer Talia Rae, whose smoky vocal simultaneously evokes equal measures of wit and sadness.

Watch the video to “Plus & Minus” HERE

David adds, “Some unfinished songs just refuse to do the polite thing and go away. And that’s certainly true of this one, which had me going round in circles for nearly 20 years to the point where it almost drove me crazy. ‘Plus & Minus’ is based in part on a chord sequence that was born way back in 2004, and it’s no exaggeration to say that it has taken all those long, intervening years to fully resolve it. It’s an unusual sort of song for me to write in that it’s an out-and-out three minute pop song. In a slightly ‘Babylon’ style, it revolves around the same idea three times. In ‘Babylon’, we had Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Here we have ‘You know the way desire is … You know the way the light is  … You know the way that time is.’ I could see that from the word go. It’s so full of hooks both lyrically and melodically that it needed a tight arrangement to really optimise their value. This took a LOT of work to get right, but we got there in the end…even if the end was 20 years on from the beginning!”

As well as changes in David’s life, an array of other events informed the album’s evolution. Its foundations were set in 2019, but progress was halted by Covid as well as the subsequent need to twice reschedule his huge White Ladder anniversary tour. Revisiting those songs was a reminder of the classic songcraft and electronic undercurrent that made them so memorable, yet David was also compelled to ambitiously broaden his palette, working with producer Ben de Vries to create dazzlingly rich orchestral strings, horns and woodwind arrangements to correspond with the scale of the themes. A change of location was also a factor, with much of the album recorded in a makeshift studio in Norfolk.

Gray is a songwriter’s songwriter, one of those rare artists who can express themselves as fully through lyrics as through melody, a richly poetic wordsmith with vast musical flair. Dear Life is a big statement, the work of a driven man obsessively focussed on a personal artistic journey.

David adds, “A lot has happened to me. There’s been change on so many levels, all the ups and downs and dramas and tragedies and joys that the slow movement through life brings. This record has been a reckoning with stuff that’s been building up like static for years. But I say this with joy and a smile on my face. I know what I’ve done is as good as anything I could possibly do.”

Past & Present Tour Dates:

JANUARY 2025
24^th – Boston, MGM Music Hall at Fenway
25^th – Philadelphia, The Met
26^th – Washington, Anthem
28^th – New York, Beacon Theatre
29^th – Red Bank New Jersey, Count Basis Centre For The Arts
31^st – Toronto, Massey Hall

FEBRUARY 2025
1^st – Detroit, Masonic Cathedral Theatre
2^nd – Chicago, Chicago Theatre
3^rd – Minneapolis, State Theatre
6^th – Portland, Keller Auditorium
7^th – Seattle, Moore Theatre
8^th – Vancouver, The Centre
10^th – Oakland, Fox Theatre
13^th – Highland, Yaamava Theatre
14^th – Los Angeles, Orpheum Theatre
15^th – Valley Centre, Harrah’s Resort Southern California
17^th – Salt Lake City, Delta Hall Eccles Theatre
18^th – Denver, Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre
20^th – Austin TX, ACL Live Moody Theatre
21^st – Dallas TX – Majestic Theatre
23^rd – Atlanta GA, Coca-Cola Roxy
24^th – Nashville TN, Ryman Auditorium

MARCH 2025
13^th – Portsmouth, Guildhall*
14^th – Brighton, Dome* SOLD OUT
16^th – Swansea, Arena* SOLD OUT
17^th – Bath, Forum* SOLD OUT
18^th – Oxford, New Theatre*
20^th – Newcastle, O2 City Hall*
21^st – Stockton, Globe* SOLD OUT
22^nd – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo* SOLD OUT
24^th – Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall*
25^th – Manchester, O2 Apollo*
27^th – Sheffield, City Hall*
28^th – Llandudno, Venue Cymru* SOLD OUT
29^th – Leicester, De Montfort Hall* SOLD OUT
31^st – Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall* SOLD OUT

APRIL 2025
1^st – Birmingham, Symphony Hall*
3^rd – London, Royal Albert Hall* SOLD OUT
5^th – Dublin, 3Arena* SOLD OUT
7^th – Brussels, Cirque Royal*
9^th – Amsterdam, Royal Theatre Carré*SOLD OUT
10^th – Amsterdam, Royal Theatre Carré*
12^th – Copenhagen, KB Hall*

MAY 2025
2^nd – Dublin, 3Arena*
6^th – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo*
8^TH – Wolverhampton, Civic Hall*
9^TH – London’s Palladium* SOLD OUT
10^TH – London’s Palladium*

*= Support by Talia Rae

Dear Life tracklist:

1. After The Harvest
2. Plus & Minus
3. Eyes Made Rain
4. Leave Taking
5. I Saw Love
6. Fighting Talk
7. Sunlight On Water
8. That Day Must Surely Come
9. Singing For The Pharaoh
10. The Messenger*
11. Acceptance (It’s Alright)
12. Future Bride
13. The Only Ones
14. The First Stone
15. More Than Anything*

*= available exclusively on Vinyl/CD formats