“Something is taken off you, which hurts as you cross the threshold into this new world,” said singer/songwriter David Gray in a recent phone interview. “It doesn’t come for free.”
Gray was in Atlanta, Georgia, in the middle of a worldwide tour for his latest record, Mutineers, and was speaking of deconstructing his songwriting approach, of hollowing out the music to find some space. “It’s a painful opening-up process of your emotions and your creative thoughts,” he explained. “It’s scary but worth the effort and the pain.”
It’s curious to hear Gray speak of needing to open himself up since his willingness to splay himself emotionally is what made his breakthrough album, White Ladder, so beguiling. Still, there is something fresh and buoyant to Mutineers that is clearly the result of his current reckoning. Songs like “Birds of the High Artic,” “The Incredible,” and “Beautiful Agony” contain enticing musical nuances that reveal Gray’s shifting path. But the track “Gulls” may be the best illustration of where he is headed sonically. It’s dreamy, moody, hypnotic, visceral. “Where I stepped off with ‘Gulls’ — that’s where I want to continue,” he said.