David Gray On The Storytelling That Drives New Album ‘Dear Life’

On his 12th album Skellig, released in 2021, British singer songwriter David Gray constructed 13 sparsely-arranged songs recorded without a click track, capturing live performances warts and all in just five days.

His latest studio album Dear Life, now available on CD and vinyl or for online streaming, runs the other direction.

On the new record, self-released via his own Laugh A Minute Records in partnership with Secretly Distribution, Gray works again with producer Ben de Vries, crafting intricately arranged music that features layer upon layer of lush instrumentation and orchestration, capping nearly five years of work on a batch of strong songwriting tied together by great storytelling.

“Our basic principles were to keep things very simple. But you can see where we ended up,” said Gray with a smile during a video call this week. “It was the end of September 2019 when I started. And I didn’t complete the last bit of recording and mastering until April 2024. So, it was a long time,” he said. “I had to be patient in terms of just completing it. Most of these songs were written before the ‘White Ladder’ tour,” he explained. “You can hear the de Vries magic hitting at new heights here on this record. I think it’s very sort of direct and melodic. I say these songs were born standing up. Some of them just wanted this embellishment. They wanted these grand voicings. And Ben’s the perfect person,” Gray continued, lauding the creative partnership. “Before we started in earnest, I said to him, ‘Look, this time, when I start to write and I leave a space, I want you to take that space. I don’t want you to wait for me to tell you to come in. Creatively, it’s open season. You just come in and you take things away, you do things,’” he said. “So, I upped the ante. And he followed through on that.”

Working with de Vries, Gray recorded parts of the new album at his home studio as well as in London, eventually outfitting a space in Norfolk, in the East of England.

“So I had a garage up in Norfolk. And I quickly kind of kicked it out, put some underfloor heating in. We just moved a few bits and carried on up there,” he said. “We’d have sort of these night sessions where we’d sometimes start working on a new idea quite late. And there was this real sense of pristine quiet up there. There’s some kind of vibration you have in the city. But, when you’re up there, you hear the geese and the ducks and the cuckoo and all of this kind of stuff. It’s a completely different world. The stars are sort of almost audible; they’re so loud,” Gray explained. “So, it was a totally different space. And it allowed certain things to happen. And that was another enrichment, just this change of scene.”

Dear Life is an album where words matter, with Gray crafting well-written verses that tell a story, developing characters while setting and resolving conflict, with the art of short stories in particular inspiring the album’s narrative form.

“I love short stories. Raymond Carver and Alice Munro are big favorites. The album title is actually a tribute to Alice Munro, who is someone I’ve read nearly everything by,” Gray explained. “It became very important on this record – which, as I say, has a kind of sense of purpose and directness,” the songwriter continued. “It struck me that there were lots of different voices speaking. A woman’s voice in ‘After the Harvest.’ A sort of disconsonant man in ‘Sunlight on Water.’ A kind of duet, which is more female than male almost in its point of view, on ‘Plus & Minus.’ And then ‘The First Stone’ as well, which is another kind of character almost speaking on the wrong side of a relationship, or an affair, or something that’s broken down. And I certainly got the sense of people brooding on mortality, relationships and illusion,” said Gray, further illustrating the themes that emerge. “So, there was a lot of storytelling. And a lot of just sheer pleasure in the magic and fabric and substance of words. It went sort of a Blood on the Tracks way.”

British singer Talia Rae, who will open some dates on Gray’s massive “Past & Present” world tour (one set to kick off Friday, January 24, 2025 in Boston, running across the U.S. through February before heading abroad in March), guests on “Plus & Minus” while Gray’s daughter makes a cameo on his latest single “Fighting Talk,” one of the album’s lighter moments.

On the new record, “Leave Taking” features horns and intricate percussion, cementing a rewarding headphone listen, while “I Saw Love” builds from a delicate acoustic guitar intro.

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“Sunlight on Water,” which opens with sweeping strings, acts as one of the best examples of the musical partnership between Gray and de Vries on Dear Life, with the song asking a crucial question that guides the storytelling: “How am I gonna put all the pieces back?”

“Suddenly they said you could travel. And the first thing I did was get in the car and drive up to Norfolk,” the songwriter explained, reflecting upon a formative moment following the quarantine of early pandemic. “It was a beautiful day. And I just sat on the beach with the dogs. I was in this sort of dreamy state. And I just sat down at the piano and these chords started flowing out – which were very much a kind of emulation of what my eyes had just been seeing,” he said, breaking down the new “Sunlight on Water.”

“It’s a very careful piece of production. We did loads and loads of takes. It was painstakingly constructed,” said Gray. “Before we put the orchestra on, we had this kind of dream piano that was flickering. Again, more sunlight reflections on water. This kind of shimmering piano behind it,” he continued, illuminating the ways in which art reflects life throughout the new song. “To be honest, once we got working and got the main take, we finished and put it to the side. We didn’t pick it back up again for several months,” Gray said. “Well, [eventually] we pulled that one off the pile and played it. And we were both absolutely blown away when we’d heard what we’d done,” he said. “And it does have this very strong emotional charge – particularly the last verse, where it all comes home to roost. It’s like a beautiful bit of Tom Waits or something.”

Gray wrote quite a bit for the new album, with tracks like “The Messenger” and “More Than Anything” acting as a bonus for fans who purchase physical copies of Dear Life.

As he reflects upon the lengthy process of painstakingly constructing the new record, Gray nevertheless looks ahead, continually pushing the music forward.

“The songs all feel very forthright. They’re very immediate. The imagery is very striking and very direct, straight away from the word go,” he said, taking stock of the new album. “So, maybe some of these rich, reflective waters in which I swam have sort of enriched the process of writing and making this record,” said David Gray. “And I wrote a lot more music than just the Dear Life sort of episode that we’ve kind of started with. I’m hoping to do another little record of the same sort of era and finish that off when I get a little bit of time later this year when maybe the touring schedule has slowed down a bit,” he said. “But I think the only thing that matters is it’s good.”