David Gray on LP33.tv: new music: discover.enjoy.share 

US TOUR DATES

Oct 23 2009 7:00P

Citi Wang Theatre Boston, Massachusetts

Oct 24 2009 8:00P

WaMu Theater @ Madison Square Garden New York, New York

Oct 26 2009 8:00P

Massey Hall Toronto, Ontario

Oct 27 2009 8:00P

Tower Theatre Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

Oct 29 2009 8:00P

Auditorium Theatre Chicago, Illinois

Oct 30 2009 8:00P

Historic Orpheum Theatre Minneapolis, Minnesota

Nov 1 2009 8:00P

Paramount Theatr Denver, Colorado

Nov 2 2009 7:00P

Kingsbury Hall Salt Lake City, Utah

Nov 4 2009 8:00P

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Portland, Oregon

Nov 5 2009 7:00P

Paramount Theatre Seattle, Washington

Nov 8 2009 8:00P

Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium San Francisco, California

Nov 9 2009 8:00P

Orpheum Theatre Los Angeles, California

Dec 9 2009 7:00P

HMV Hammersmith Apollo London

Dec 11 2009 7:00P

The Sage Gateshead Gateshead

Dec 12 2009 7:00P

HMV Picture House Edinburgh

Dec 13 2009 7:00P

02 Academy Leeds

Dec 15 2009 7:00P

The Symphony Hall Birmingham

Dec 16 2009 7:00P

Colston Hall Bristol

Dec 18 2009 7:00P

Manchester Apollo Manchester

Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter David Gray is set to release a deluxe edition of his highly-anticipated new album, Draw The Line. Scheduled for release on September 22nd, the Deluxe edition will be packaged in a hard cover bound digipack and will feature a bonus audio CD of David's greatest hits recorded live at the Roundhouse Theatre in London's ”marking the first time these tracks will be released to the public. The edition will also feature a 20- page illustrated booklet. With both the previously unreleased tracks and booklet, the deluxe edition proves itself as being a must have for any David Gray fan.

Tracks on the bonus CD:

1. World To Me

2. Sail Away

3. Ain't No Love

4. Babylon

5. Slow Motion

6. The One I Love

7. Other Side

8. Nightblindness

After a four year break, David Gray is returning with his first release on Mercer Street Records, the sister label of indie Downtown Records. Recorded in London, and produced by the artist himself, David's voice and song-writing are as distinct as ever on the release. Ripe with melancholic beauty, Draw The Line is a glorious collection, brimming with hooks and imagery. The lead single off the album, 'Fugitive', is built around nape-prickling piano and electric guitar and features a soaring contribution from a gospel choir. Also featured on the album are two duets not to be missed with Jolie Holland and Annie Lennox. Gray will be performing on The Late Show with David Letterman on September 25th and on the road this fall across the US and Canada in support of his new album.

David Gray is not one to rest on his laurels; 12 million album sales, the best selling album in Ireland ever with 'White Ladder', a BAFTA nomination for his soundtrack work on Amma Assante's 2004 film 'A Way Of Life'. Two Ivor Novellos, a Q award, two Brit nominations, and a Grammy nomination.

Those laurels, in fact, might not be an actual pain in the arse, but they certainly make him fidget.

"I didn't have a masterplan but I knew that I was gonna make some wholesale changes at the end of making 'Life In Slow Motion'," the singer-songwriter says of his 2005, No.1 (seventh) studio album.

"I'd had a really good run, I'd built a band with some great people. But the creative spark that had been there, that [1998's] 'White Ladder' was born out of, was sort of gone. I just felt there was a need for some new energy and a new impetus to the whole thing. I was hungry."

"I wrote 'Draw The Line' in June 2007," he recalls of the song that gives his new album its title and the song, which lit the touch paper for the rest of the album.

Over the next two years Gray kept up that standard. New songs galore 'lurched' from his fingers, featuring guest vocal turns from Jolie Holland and Annie Lennox. 'Draw The Line' is the sound of an artist turning his lens, his camera, his vision outwards, providing an extrospective take on the world.

"I'd been very introspective for whatever reason," he admits. "Partly success, partly things that happened in my life around the time of 'White Ladder'. I guess as a singer-songwriter you're gonna have a little bit of that anyway in your makeup. My previous records were inward most of the time. But suddenly with the song 'Draw The Line' I'd kicked the front door down and I was outside. The world was my oyster: that's what I felt as a writer."

Pitching up in his studio of The Church, Gray set to work on his self-produced record, with esteemed assistance from his band. 'Stella The Artist' was an early favourite, a punchy song with an almost Glitter Band-ish intro.

"It's fun basically," says Gray. "It just became this wall of sound. And the lyrics are pretty much the first things that came into my head. It's me singing to the muse. 'Stella' is the giver of wherever all this stuff comes from."

She was prolific that week. Gray wrote three other songs in a matter of days. One of them, 'Fugitive', would become the album's lead single. It's built around nape-prickling piano and electric guitar, and soaring contribution from a gospel choir.

"I've been a fugitive from life, I've been hiding in my bubble. And I had this image of Saddam Hussein being pulled out a hole in the ground. That's where the "mud streaked fugitive" line came from. It's about hiding from life, from yourself. It's saying: don't forsake it all because there's something keeping you upright and keeping you walking down the street. And that force was coming flying out of me."

The songs kept flowing and for 'Kathleen' he had plans of a collaboration. American singer-songwriter Jolie Holland had supported him in the US, and he realised she was the perfect backing vocalist for what he had in mind. "On the tree of American music she is a rare thing these days," he enthuses. "Utterly authentic, a natural, she sounds like she could have been singing in the 1930s with Blind Willie McTell. She's got the blues in her blood."

For the album's epic finale, 'Full Steam Ahead', Gray also had big vocal ideas. Initially he thought the 'Righteous Brothers-style' song needed another male vocal. Chris Isaak was top of his list.

"It's a song with quite dark sentiments. I see it as a broad political thing, I think of the line from TS Eliot, 'a patient etherised upon a table', that's the state we're in as a collective mass. We're just sedated, talking shit. We're so disconnected from the guts of life most of the time. But it would have sunk under it's own worthy weight with another male singer singing with me," he laughs. "When I was demoing it with my own voice it was like two bullocks braying in a field – too testosterone!"

Enter Annie Lennox. "She has the presence and that little bit of bite. She's got enough attitude that she could carry the lines off with some real presence. She's got a tough voice. But when she came in not only did she bring that but she brought this joyous, pop energy – she lifted the song and gave us the chorus we were asking for."

'Draw The Line' is the warm, fresh, organic sound of David Gray in a new, revitalised light. He had all the success in the world, and more, but he was hungry for more – not more success, but more feeling. More heart. More soul. More songs. More life. The formula had become a stale and worn one.

"Hunger is a very accurate appraisal for how I feel," he says. "I got to say things as a writer that I've obviously been dying to say for years. Songs like 'Nemesis', 'First Chance' and 'Draw The Line' were so liberating. Images and ideas just flowing out and a bit of humour as well, and a bit of caustic soda ground in there too. A bit of spice to the whole thing. The camera was suddenly panning everywhere. It was just a wonderful feeling. I just feel very, very alive. That's the feeling that's in 'Draw The Line'."