Way back when, David Gray was just an acoustic troubadour with a small following playing the club circuit in London. Nearly ten years on, he's a multi-platinum artist whose following is multiplying throughout the world.
'The EP's 92-94' rounds up his three Hut singles and their associated B-sides, along with the videos for 'Shine' and 'Wisdom'. On the one hand, it's a barrel-scraping exercise by a record company keen to cash in on Gray's popularity. On the other, the quality of the music here justifies the album's existence.
Gray wears his influences firmly on his sleeve on this early material - 'Blood On The Tracks'-era Dylan, 'Nebraska'-era Springsteen and The Waterboys can all be heard in equal measure. Where Gray comes into his own though is his powerful voice and his use of the everyday in his lyrics. Witness the domesticity of 'The Rice' - "The broccoli boils/In a pan on the gas stove/Where we stand/Won't you take this spatula in this hand" - there is a gritty British realism to his writing.
Keen observers will recognise 'Shine', later covered by actress Kathy Burke on the soundtrack to This Year's Love. Gray's version is more epic with him on bombastic vocal form. 'L's Song' has a stark quality that is furthered by the harshness of the elements surrounding him: "The wind blows my thoughts like a leaf".
His lyrical concerns haven't really altered over the years; lost love, time slipping away, fractured relationships, the search for inner paradise. What he has got better at is distilling his themes into finely honed pop songs without sacrificing the quality of his playing or his singing.
These early singles demonstrate that there was a special quality about Gray from the beginning of his recording career. Unfortunately, the vagaries of fashion and music business politics dictated that he would be made to wait for his break. "All these blind eyes and deaf ears" he cries out on 'Brick Walls'. Fortunately not any more.
