David Gray | UK March Tour
DAVID GRAY
NEW ALBUM: GOLD IN A BRASS AGE – MARCH 8, 2019
17-DATE UK & IRELAND TOUR – SOLD OUT
INC. LONDON’S ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL – SUN, MARCH 17, 2019
David Gray will release his new album Gold In A Brass Age – his first album of new material in four years – on March 8, 2019 through IHT Records / AWAL Recordings. Produced by Ben de Vries, son of producer and soundtrack composer Marius, Gold In A Brass Age finds Gray in renewed creative form and will arrive ahead of a seventeen date tour of UK and Ireland across March and April 2019. Commencing at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on Friday, 15th March, the dates will include a sold-out London’s Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, 17th March before culminating with two nights at Dublin’s Bord Gais Theatre on Saturday, 5th and Sunday, 6th April.
Gray doesn’t sound like himself on Gold In A Brass Age. His eleventh record in a 26-year recording career, the challenge was to retain the same excitement for music whilst pushing himself in to unfamiliar terrain. A song-writing shake-up with an element of mystery pertinent throughout – perhaps in part explaining the album’s title, taken from a line in the Kafka-esque short story Blackbird Pie by Raymond Carver. You’ll still recognise his gravelly rasp, but his singing is softer, sweeter, more intimate and occasionally falsetto. His lyrics have been transformed too, declamatory tales of love and loss replaced by couplets closer to poetry, and whilst his guitar and piano playing remain, the ushering in of electronica and the exploring of alternative sound textures alongside new production techniques, has turned his approach to song-writing on its head.
Says Gray: “With this album, I was keen to get away from narrative. Instead of writing melodies, I looked for phrases with a natural cadence, so that the rhythm began with the words. I reimagined where a song might spring from and what form it could take.”
Produced by de Vries, work on the album begun back in 2016 and was written and recorded in several month-long spells between tours to promote 2016’s The Best Of David Gray, that included fifty dates in the States, and a co-headline tour with Alison Krauss. Despite de Vries and Gray not having met before, the seeds of the album’s sound were sewn early on in David’s home studio. “We were talking about production ideas and artists that we were currently listening to when Ben played the track ‘Sixes And Nine’ by Birkwin Jersey,” David recalls, “with this electro-acoustic sound and very chopped up aesthetic, it was a great reference point and precisely the sort of thing I was looking for.”
Album tracks ‘Watching The Waves’ and ‘Hall Of Mirrors’ were the first to follow as de Vries and Gray developed the arrangements to songs that give the album its atmospheric and experimental undertones, in which tracks shapeshift, soaking in soulful grooves, electronica, blues and folk. The outro to ‘Furthering’ is awash with the use of vocoder and autotune, the layered falsetto of ‘Ridiculous Heart’ may summon the spectre of Prince, whilst ‘Hurricane Season’ makes use of soprano sax, melodicas and operatic samples to reach an unexpected crescendo.
The abstract lyrics Gray had collected in the months before, pickpocketing words “like a jay picking things out of a window” may not tell tales as such, but in hindsight, they were revelatory. The themes that emerged are apparent from opening track ‘The Sapling’, also the album’s hypnotic lead single. “Time ticking by is a theme that recurs throughout the record,” says David. “Fragility, renewal, an ever-changing perspective. It’s not about a cup emptying, but one that’s still full to the brim, a life enriched by experience, the familiar seen in a completely different light.”
Londonboy Tattooer’s striking album artwork depicts an Emperor moth with the City of London captured between its wingspan, acknowledging the city’s impact on the making of the record. “This feels like a London record, more than any I’ve made since White Ladder. The city has a staggering capacity to tear itself apart and rebuild at a rate that’s almost too much to take in. In its own small way this album is both a part of, and a tribute to, that relentless energy.”
Says Gray of Gold In A Brass Age, “I’ve been through a phenomenal amount of emotional upheaval in recent years. You can only process so much; you just have to push most of it away. In the heat of the creative moment the weight of buried feeling becomes bound to the spark of a new idea and is magically transformed and given form. This album’s style isn’t autobiographical, I’ve markedly avoided that path, yet when I pull back from the record – it’s a pure document of my life at this time.”
Live Dates:
Fri, 15 Mar Cardiff St David’s Hall (SOLD OUT)
Sat, 16 Mar Cambridge Corn Exchange (SOLD OUT)
Sun, 17 Mar London Royal Festival Hall (SOLD OUT)
Tue, 19 Mar Brighton Dome
Wed, 20 Mar Southend Cliffs Pavilion
Fri, 22 Mar Manchester Bridgewater Hall (SOLD OUT)
Sat, 23 Mar Nottingham Royal Concert Hall
Sun, 24 Mar Gateshead Sage (SOLD OUT)
Tues, 26 Mar Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (SOLD OUT)
Wed, 27 Mar Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre
Fri, 29 Mar Birmingham Symphony Hall (SOLD OUT)
Sat, 30 Mar York Barbican (SOLD OUT)
Sun, 31 Mar Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (SOLD OUT)
Tues, 2 Apr Belfast Waterfront (SOLD OUT)
Thur, 4 April Castlebar Royal Theatre
Fri, 5 April Dublin Bord Gais Theatre (SOLD OUT)
Sat, 6 April Dublin Bord Gais Theatre (SOLD OUT)
Links: www.davidgray.com / https://www.facebook.com/davidgray / https://twitter.com/DavidGray /
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealDavidGray / https://www.instagram.com/davidgray/ 