Life in Slow Motion

Evidently not one for squatting on his laurels--years of pre-fame self-sufficiency has seen to that--Gray has toiled towards new horizons, drafting in an external producer for the first time. Marius De Vries, whose duties grace the more recent works of Bjork, Madonna and Rufus Wainwright, adds a more poetic dimension to such Thomas Hardy-esque musical landscapes as "Now And Always" and "Nos Da Cariad", where the negligibility of human emotion is contrasted with the raw omnipotence of the environment and the succinct brutality of existence. Not that Gray is a total mope; "The One I Love"--a paean to life expressed through the lips of a dying battlefield casualty--is a fine, if anomalistic, pop song in the Springsteen tradition and the cinematic sweetness of "Alibi" disguises its hair-tearing, long-distance estrangement in one of Gray's more superlative radio friendly tunes.

Life In Slow Motion might well be David Gray's darkest hour yet but for homogeneity, ambition and self-expression it's also his most realised record by some distance. --Kevin Maidment

More to Explore

A New Day at Midnight (CD)

White Ladder (CD)

David Gray - Live (DVD)

A Way of Life (DVD)

Find more from David Gray