One of the things British singer-songwriter David Gray loves most about the legendary Nina Simone is, “The way she weaves magic into things.” It is a feat many attempt yet so few attain, and that is not lost on Gray, who released a Best Of album in October.
Gray, who gained attention in 2000 following the rerelease of his White Ladder record, is always searching for the spirit in the music and new ways to make it more intriguing, more passionate, more meaningful. He takes feelings and encircles them with mood and melody. He brings new beats and softens them into a heart-beating rhythm, sometimes so delicate they could shatter, other times crackling and humming like a fire engine siren. It’s just all in the way he experiences the song coming out.
A product of Manchester in northern England, Gray was a folk musician in search of an audience, which finally burst him onto the scene with White Ladder and it’s powerful hit, “This Year’s Love.” With 2014’s Mutineers, Gray delved even deeper. Two years later, as he readies an album of new material for a 2017 release, he hands fans a collection of previous songs, picked for various reasons than just their radio popularity, and two songs that he began just after Mutineers. “Enter Lightly” is the new video.
Glide spoke with Gray recently about his music and the quest to breathe new life into an old art form.
Your new CD is a Best Of. Was it a no brainer as to what songs to put on there?
I guess there were some that picked themselves. I think the world of streaming has sort of picked certain songs out as being very popular that perhaps aren’t so obvious. And we’ve included one of those, for example, a track called “Only The Wine,” which got huge amounts of streams. So it represents the Foundling record. It wasn’t particularly a record we worked at radio so it’s more of a fan record. So some things chose themselves by other means. It wasn’t just as simple as the biggest commercial songs. We looked at it from across the board and in terms of tracks that I think are important as well. But yeah, it wasn’t the most challenging thing to do, choose the best songs to go on the record, but it was certainly obvious thanks to that.
Was there any hesitancy about doing a Best Of right now, maybe you felt you needed to have a few more records under your belt or a few more years?
Yeah, sure, it’s not something I had in mind but then for various reasons it made complete sense now. You know, it’s my music and I’m trying to draw attention to it. I’m not into the idea of my songs on an advert. I don’t go for that kind of thing. And it’s not like it’s going to get my blood going like putting a whole new album out. That will happen next year as I’ve got a new album in the pipeline and a lot of other stuff besides. There’s going to be a lot more new music coming out next year.
So as I said, for various reasons of timing and other things, it makes sense. You have to bear in mind as well that I am my own record company and to be independent in this world, where sales are basically just falling away to nearly nothing, it’s just trying to survive. We’re trying to extract some value and draw some attention to what’s already there. That’s all a part of it. It’s not something I had on my agenda, it’s just something that came up and began to have a certain amount of momentum. I had a couple of songs left over after the last record that I didn’t know what to do with. My producer, Andy Barlow, and I worked on some new music but then he got swallowed up by a massive project and I had to just let him go and find somebody else to work with. So there was new music there and there was a will to do it and in the end it seemed like a sensible thing to do. And there were realistic things that governed trying to run a record company and pay for the funds and pay for the people that work there and I’ve got to think about some of those as well.
The two songs, “Enter Lightly” and “Smoke Without Fire,” were those left over from the last album?
They came after. When I got back off the road I started working with Andy on some new material and these were two that got finished; we started a few that didn’t. It’s been under ten years since I released a Greatest Hits under very different circumstances, to get out of my Warner’s contract, but there have been three albums and a live record in the interim.
What are the brand new songs sounding like? What’s been going through your brain?
The new album is really uplifting. It’s the most uplifting music I think I’ve made. It was a painful process making Mutineers, the previous record. It was hard work but suddenly I felt like I was gaining new ground. And I’ve taken advantage of that, those difficulties, and I found a whole new world of possibilities in the recordings I’m making now. I’m working with a young producer and everything seems to have a vibrancy to it and it’s more kind of what we call electro-acoustic. It’s a sample of me playing guitar and the keyboard and we loop that and feed that back and I work over the top of it. It’s got kind of a slight electronic vibe to it. It’s very forward-leaning and feels very light and yet I feel the lyrics are very substantial. It has a momentum to it and I’m very, very excited about it. But I have to start getting ready for touring these solo shows I’ve got coming up so I’m going to have to put it to one side until the new year. I’m hoping it all wraps up by Easter and then it will come out later next year.
I’ve noticed as your music has progressed over the years you keep adding new little textures into your albums. Are those intentional, like you heard something and wanted to try it, or it came more spontaneous while creating or working with a new producer who brings in fresh ideas?
It’s all those things. A lot of these things I stumble on myself or I suddenly get a feeling that I want to, like on the last record or these two new tracks, I did a lot of vocals, a massive amount of backing vocals. “Enter Lightly,” for example, is a very vocal heavy track. Obviously, the producers, both Andy and the new producer, have brought a lot of color of their own. I’m always looking for something new, I’m always cracking the music open and taking advantage of various elements just to create some space so that something else can happen. That’s an ongoing process and very deliberate, looking for new sounds. I’m thirsty for some new sounds and new ideas. It’s not enough to repeat yourself. That can all become dreadfully dull and predictable in that way so I’ve always got one ear open and always just looking.
My creative process is much more open-ended now. When I go into studio, it’s not like I go in with a pre-meditated plan in terms of a written song and I want to add a bit of drums and a bit of bass. I go in now with virtually nothing and work from zero up and the reason for that is it leaves a lot of space for other people to get involved before the songs become something. I also want to keep ahead of the self-consciousness that cripples everything. Like, what am I writing about? The process that I go through writing stuff has changed a lot and it’s a lot to do with trying to find new ways to voice the music and new kinds of space around the vocal. That’s what delicious, the space around the vocal, and that’s what I’m always looking for. So any mean to achieve that I go to great lengths.
Have you always been like that, even when you were first starting to write songs as a young man?
No, I was intimidated by recording studios when I started. I just wanted the integrity of what I was doing to be captured in a very honest way. I was a bit scared of people poshing it up, making it sound proper. I wanted it to sound raw and I wanted it to sound like me or what I thought music should sound like. As the years go by, obviously White Ladder was the turning point when I made a record at home and began to take the whole production game in hand and get a feel for it and started to relax in front of the microphone because I was working in a much more intimate way, in my own house, with no pressure on. That’s when I really began to learn and then I became more thirsty for new ideas. It’s very different now the way that I work. I trust that if I jump, I’m not going to hit the ground so I jump off without knowing what’s going to happen and that’s basically where it starts these days.
But it’s not the same as I used to be, no. I found the whole thing very depressive going into the studio with people trying to make it sound a certain way, the way the record should sound. I think rules, you’ve got to be wary of them. So I found it all quite awkward when I started and I just wanted to capture what I did the best way I could and I was a very raw singer-songwriter. I didn’t really have the sophistication in my performance or my knowledge of how sound should be captured so it had mixed results. But the will was there.
Do you think that can be one of the biggest mistakes a songwriter or musician can make is letting the intimidation get to them?
You’re just human and it’s really you intimidate yourself. Fame intimidated me for a while, and success. You know, I lost my bearings trying to think about it and questioning what it was I was doing. Was I being honest or was I doing just what everyone wanted me to do? A million things can interfere with your thought process and when you’re young and naïve and green, you’re working a certain way, you’re fighting yourself to a certain extent and then later on you’re only fighting shadows. There is always something waiting to make it difficult. That’s why I don’t flee the element of self-consciousness. I’ve got over myself in many other ways and I have confidence that I will find something. If there’s a song in me and there’s something in my heart that needs to be said, it’s going to come out and that’s taken a lot of time and a lot of confidence. But when you’ve made a lot of music then you’ve got a great chance of repeating yourself or worrying that it’s not important enough, like, what am I saying this time? How can I justify writing another song? What more have I got to say? And it’s so easy to destroy the process. Obviously it’s agony when you go that way. So I try to treat that moment by just working somewhat spontaneously without any idea whether what I’m doing is important or not and then I’ll come to a decision about it later. Make it and then worry.
To you, what is the hardest thing to write about – personal experiences or made-up stories?
The thing is, it’s all made-up even if it is personal because it’s a fiction you’re writing based on something you felt or something you imagined. It might resemble your life but it isn’t your life, it’s a song. Even if you just use a drum machine or a keyboard making dance music, some of that emotion is going to get in there. So you don’t have to worry about the emotions flooding into it. Music is the sort of map for the emotions. It generates emotions. You’ve got the computer generating some notes or the kick drum going boom, boom, boom, boom and you just got a C going beep, beep, beep and the C carries on for eight bars and then suddenly changes to an A, and you’ve suddenly got some drama and things are starting to happen and then it might change into a chord. So another note might come in and suddenly you start to feel emotion coming off the music. They’re not placing emotion there, they’re just playing notes. So I guess what I’m saying is that we are emotional creatures, and then we write and pour our heart and soul into it. It causes us to go looking for it and that was something I might have thought when I was younger.
I find that everything comes out that needs to come out and then I would describe the process as autobiographical. But sometimes I’ll get emotional about what I’m writing. I wrote a line recently, “I’m the ghost of Christmas past looking through the glass.” It was just a throwaway thing, just came to me in the moment. I was just looking for lines and then I realized what I was saying and I realized what the glass was and I realized what I was saying about being the ghost of Christmas past. And I was completely emotional about it. But I didn’t go looking for it. It was just there. So I think when things are going well, you cross your emotions in unexpected ways but I don’t drive straight at them.
It’s a bit like if you do an interview and you ask me direct questions we can go so far. But sometimes we could be talking about dogs or what we like to cook on a winter’s evening and it might be a much more revealing conversation than asking me about music. You might learn much more about music and me by not coming straight at it. And that’s pretty much how I feel about writing. I don’t sit there wondering. I make notes. These days I just make notes all the time. Obviously, you’ve got phones so you can make notes and make musical notes on the recorder. I take photos and that reminds me of ideas. So literally I will have a few notes and can start from these segments and hopefully they will congeal into something.
Were you at all influenced by the Madchester Scene in the eighties?
(laughs) I was from Manchester, and even when I was at the art school I’d go over there, and that was during Madchester – Stone Roses, that whole thing, and later on Oasis – but I can’t say it’s a part of me. That scene definitely wasn’t. It happened and I enjoyed some of the music that came out of it a lot but I was never a part of it. I knew people that were really into it at the time and I would stay close to it geographically – I was just down the road, thirty or forty miles away – but no, it didn’t affect me. I think I’ve always been on a slightly different path, more the singer-songwriter path. My path was a little different.
Do you believe a song could ever be too honest, too close to the heart, that it’s almost painful to get out?
Oh God yes. Some of them are quite painful to write. But what matters is if it is a successful song. It’s not whether it hurt to write or it didn’t hurt – is it a successful song? My most extreme song, “This Year’s Love,” I was asked to write it for a film. I questioned whether that was an honest way to begin a piece of writing, because someone had asked me to and set the parameters for me cause the film was to be called “This Year’s Love.” But I thought, well, I’m not in the condition to be too sniffy about these things. I’ve got no money and I’ve got no record deal, I think I’ll just have a go (laughs).
So I sat down and spent an afternoon and wrote the song and didn’t think about it, although I was a bit concerned that I might have done something I shouldn’t have. But it’s all a bit ridiculous and here I am years later and that’s my most popular song if you look at the streaming numbers. I love to play it for people, it just works as a song. It doesn’t matter that my heart wasn’t bleeding; the point is I was trying to make the song work and I used my experience to come up with the lyrics and then it feels real. I’ll change details in a song cause I think it’s too autobiographical or I just won’t go towards something, I’ll find a more veiled way of saying something because I’m uncomfortable with the sort of autobiographical aspects that people read into everything. But I think that everything you feel comes out. It’s obviously in your voice somehow, even if you don’t write it explicitly it comes out, the feeling comes out somehow. I’ve never read a book about Nina Simone but I feel like I know lots about how she felt from listening to her sing.
What do you love about Nina Simone?
I think she was brilliant at picking songs that suited her approach. But there is just something magical. She’s like a sprite and I love the way she sings. Van Morrison and Nina are my favorite voices and they both do the same thing. They’re not too fussy about things and they’re always very lazy but their knowledge of music is so complete. They know that the only mistake you can make is to rush at things. I think it’s the sound of her voice, the way she weaves magic into things. Her version of singing songs is quite amazing.
I think what it is is that she needed the music. I think her life was a disaster on so many levels. I think I need music for the same reasons, that I find everything a bit of a struggle and it’s a release. But it’s a magical world she was transported through as she held the song and presented it. It was special, it was so important to her and I think she was far too a master at her craft to try to gush emotion. She tried to execute things in a certain way. If you look at some of the footage of her at the Montreux Festival, the comeback show, it’s so raw, so real; so odd in some ways. But she’s incredible.
What are your plans for the rest of the year? You said you were going to get ready to do some shows?
Yeah, the way I’m treating the show is I’m always looking for some way of doing something differently and doing a string of solo shows. So I’m taking it back to just me and just the essential parts of the song. But I’ve also got some delay pedals onstage and I’m going to be looping bits of my playing in some of the songs and sort of playing over the top in kind of a creative element. I don’t know too much about that cause I haven’t had a chance to try it out so I’ll be growing up in public (laughs). It promises to be lively, very lively.
But I think that is what is going to make the show special, the fact that I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I do know it’s going to be a pin drop sound so I’ve got to take the sound right down, I’ve got to make the sound really breathe. I’ve got to break it down on piano. The dynamic range is normally four to nine with the occasional ten. I’ll be trying to operate from two to six. It’s much softer and to slow them down, quiet them down, to like almost different songs. I’ve got all these strategies in my head but I need to spend the week playing them and playing them and playing them and also work with these new pedals to see what magic I can create. It’s like painting a canvas. It’s so lovely and so spontaneous to return to the thing of self-consciousness being a bit of the enemy. I can work so fast just putting one idea over the other but I’m not even thinking about what I’m doing. I’m just reacting and just reaching for notes and before you know it you have this kind of tapestry of sound that’s been created and you don’t know quite how. It’s a hugely exciting work to get ideas out. So I’m very excited about that.
Top Portrait by Jake Walters
