Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 12/09/05
Label: Atlantic

First the good news: two albums on from "White Ladder", David Gray has lost none of his fragile humanity or bleary-eyed longing. Now the even better news: with "Life In Slow Motion" he's delivered an album so rich and deft that it pushes beyond the realm of the humble singer-songwriter, to earn him a place alongside the likes of Springsteen and Van Morrison as one of music's revered elite. Without question, this is a classic album.

From the first tender bars of "Alibi" through to the final, crashing crescendo of "Disappearing World", it captivates and caresses; aiming its love-stuck-and-bruised laments so perfectly at the heart that they can simultaneously break and fill it with hope via the lightest of melodic touches. It's an album made to comfort, console and humble, and it does so with every single track.

That David Gray could make such an apparently potent and perfect album may be hard for many to believe. Even his most ardent fans would have to admit, that lovely as his songs are, Gray is spectacularly fitting name for him. Add the wobbly-headed persona of the nicest man in music and there's reason to believe that he'd forever be plodding along the middle of the road.

But then this is not the same David Gray. He looks the same and the voice is unmistakable, but he's a changed man. He's finally accepted that the self-financed "White Ladder" was a runaway, six million selling success and that he doesn't have to make music on a shoe-string in his bedroom. He's not the underdog anymore. He's one of the UK's biggest selling artists and, finally, he's started acting like it.

Buoyed with a new confidence, "Life In Slow Motion" has Gray reaching beyond the stripped bare cosiness of his comfort zone. Aided by U2, Madonna and David Bowie collaborator Marius De Vries - the first time Gray's worked with an outside producer since his pre-"White Ladder" days - he's built a grand cinematic world, full of euphoric highs and heart-wrenching lows.

Everything is bigger and heightened. The likes of "Ain't No Love" and "From Here I Can Almost See The Sea" are tantalisingly intimate melodies, sounding as if they were recorded on vast sound stages; they're so racked with desolate beauty. "Nos Da Cariad" and "Disappearing World", all churning melancholy and thundering rock match Coldplay's haunting best, pound for pound, and while his lyrics at times veer towards the impossibly cryptic, the songs are so charged with emotion that the hope and despair aren't hard to find.

At a time when the album charts are awash with earnest singer-songwriters pouring their hearts out from their bedrooms, David Gray has upped his game unbelievably, scoring himself a place in the superleague in the process.

    by Dan Gennoe