David Gray

David Gray
Life in Slow Motion
BMG
Gray took the world somewhat by surprise five years ago. Among the pop elite of today, Gray is more kinetic than Rufus Wainwright, less mired in bombast than Coldplay, seeming naked as a stray cat on a symphony stage. Slow Motion is an apt description of how the spacious arrangements hypnotize, enabling Gray to sell the chorus, moving the earth once again. Things get layered on “Disappearing World,” where city nightfall has the weight of a last day alive. You’d swear the producer was George Martin, not some dude named Marius de Vries. As a huge artist in the UK, Gray is granted an arsenal which he uses homeopathically. Each dose of strings is so right, likely to be balanced by glockenspiel or autoharp so nobody gets any posh notions.
—Doug Taylor