David Gray will release his fifth studio album, A New Day at Midnight on October 5th. For Gray, the album's release is almost like starting anew, as the multi-platinum success of the left-field 2000 hit, White Ladder, has, if nothing else, ensured that infamous stories -- like being billed below sold-out bar-b-que at one midwest venue -- are a thing of the past.

That said, Gray's success was tempered by the death of his father nearly two years ago, an event he calls, "probably the most profound thing that's happened to me in the last couple of years in spite of all the success that's come in tandem." Bookended by a pair of songs with contrasting types of death imagery -- the grim, opening "Dead in the Water" and the hopeful, closing "The Other Side" -- A New Day captures an emotional cycle that tempers despair with hope in the form of the more upbeat songs like the cryptic, ethereal "Kangaroo," and more upbeat songs like "Real Love" and "Caroline."

"My father dying, that's what the core of this record deals with," Gray says. "The biggest songs go directly there: "Freedom," "The Other Side," "Last Boat to America." [But] it would be a misrepresentation to say that's all it's about. There were several other themes going on and there's a certain amount of joie de vivre on some of the tracks that's a counterpoint to some of the more down numbers. It has a certain balance and it has a momentum. I wanted to make sure it didn't dwell permanently on this mortality theme. There are other songs and there's a sort of release there, when they come along."

Calling the album a follow-up to White Ladder doesn't quite acknowledge the road Gray took to where he is today. His first three records -- 1993's A Century Ends, 1994's Flesh and 1996's Sell, Sell, Sell -- were met with rigid indifference. Even White Ladder (which was released in the U.K. in 1999), was slow to find its feet. Recorded in his apartment, the album earned its stripes 5,000 records at a time in the U.K., before Dave Matthews made it the flagship release for his ATO Records a year later. The record moved slow and steady, with it's hooky single, "Babylon," eventually making it one of the year's most unlikely lost ships in the mainstream.

That mainstream became a riptide of touring and promotional duty, and Gray made several attempts to start the new record, before opting to scrap much of what he'd written in the wake of White Ladder and take a bit of time "to recharge the batteries a bit." If the darker tone of the record reflects changes in Gray's life over the past couple of years, his recording process wasn't spoiled by success. Gray built a studio in south London in order to avoid recording in his place of residence ("which my wife was really pleased about"), but otherwise the template remained in place. "I kept it simple and that felt right," he says. "Everything's changed in a certain way, but then nothing really has. It's still the same process. It took me a long time to find a comfortable way of working. So having just discovered that, I wasn't going to abandon it, in favor of this huge sort of budget, flying around the world recording. Today, Monserrat . . . tomorrow, Nice. We just stayed in south London. Got pretty sick of the sandwiches though. Jesus, we could've done with an extra couple sandwich places."

Gray says the majority of the songs were penned this year, but that the new material, and a few survivors penned during White Ladder promotion, gave the album a sense of equilibrium. "I think it could have been last year's record, but so much happened that I wanted to write whole new songs," he says. "And they're the ones that dominate. But it seemed a shame to waste some of the stuff, so this is my little body of work and I think it ties together. So it's like a body of work stretching over several years."

A tour of the U.K. is on the docket for November and December, at which point Gray will likely return to the U.S. for further promotional duty and a tour . . . midwest and all. "I cherish the midwest really," he says. We've had a rough and tumble relationship."

ANDREW DANSBY
(September 20, 2002)