Singer David Gray Lets His Music Speak for Itself
By: Joel Selvin Chronicle Pop Music Editor - The San Francisco Chronicle
May 24th 2001 7:31am
This David Gray is trying a new gimmick. It's called music. He doesn't wear costumes onstage. He doesn't have a lead
guitarist. He's not a genre hyphenate (trip-hop, pop-rock, alt-
country). All he does is sing his fine songs rather well, put his heart into
his performance and exude a great joy at performing. It'll probably never catch on. It's easy to understand why the 33-year-old Irish singer-
songwriter, who opened a sold-out two-night engagement last night at
the Warfield Theater, was practically ignored right out of the
business. He is an unassuming, straightforward musician who is not
playing any of the angles. The music industry never understands that
strategy. But his last-chance, fourth album, "White Ladder," turned out to
be a runaway success, currently working on its second million in
sales in this country, where it was released by rock star Dave
Matthews on his label. It has already topped the charts back home in
Ireland, where Gray first put out the album himself. A fifth album of previously unreleased recordings, "Lost and
Found," has followed last year's "White Ladders" onto the U.S.
charts. With little more than a few judicious tape loops and simple three-
piece accompanyment, blond-haired Gray whipped up quite a lot of
music at the Warfield. He strummed acoustic guitar, pounded a grand
piano and sang his little heart out for 90 minutes. His almost
invariably mid-tempo songs built to dramatic finishes, Gray punching
home his songs with soulful intensity. Gray is a classic singer-songwriter out of the Bob Dylan/Van
Morrison school, although his vocal style owes something to the soul-
smitten Mick Hucknall of Simply Red. If over the course of the
evening his otherwise excellent material tended toward a certain
sameness, that's only because Gray floods everything he does with his
own highly developed style. He opened with "Sail Away," film footage of ocean waves filling
the backdrop behind the four-piece group. The band focused
exclusively on framing Gray's songs -- there were no instrumental
interludes, no 16-bar solos, no extemporaneous excursions. The other
musicians decorated the groove, while Gray stoked the engine of the
songs on his guitar. He played a couple of solo numbers on piano.
"This Year's Love" was especially effective. With the entire band behind him, Gray on piano drove "Please
Forgive Me," the opening track from the hit album, to a dramatic
close before the encores, a piece so intensely wrought it was
practically draining. Drummer Clune, a key production collaborator on "White Ladder,"
was an animated maniac, clowning around on a drum kit he played with
mallets, set up on the side of the stage. Keyboardist Tim Bradshaw
and bassist Rob Malone completed the lineup. Opening the show was the diminutive Nelly Furtado, a 22 year-old
Canadian who also has a hit record with "I'm Like a Bird." Perky to
the point of pesty, Furtado is exactly what Gray isn't, a melange of
different styles and musical ideas -- say, Brazilian rhythms set
against hip-hop beats and a DJ scratching -- without any real
character of her own. Gray, on the other hand, appears to be a unique phenomenon on
today's Top of the Pops -- a genuine article, an authentic musician.
Let's hope for a trend.
 (C) 2001 The San Francisco Chronicle. via Bell&Howell Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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