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I try to keep first person articles off my web page but as I have just recently reviewed David Gray’s new album New Day At Midnight I thought I could over indulge in my review of the third gig in his World Tour. I went to this gig with huge apprehensions, suggesting to my wife on the way from the car park that five years ago I’d have been like a little child waiting for Santa going to a David Gray gig but that there was no adrenaline running at all. The reason was that I have been a Gray fan since Flesh, his second album released in 1994. I can remember my mate David Dark bringing me Sell, Sell, Sell from the States and waiting patiently for White Ladder when it was only available in Belfast through the wonderful Hector’s House. I played "Birds Without Wings," "Let the Truth Sting." and "What Are You" on my radio show long before anyone decided to playlist "Babylon." I was delighted of course with his phenomenal success but here I was in a crowd of thousands of radio listeners who if you’d asked what is first album was they would have answered White Ladder!

There was the size too. How could the intimacy of what Gray does connect in a venue that he described as “a big silver tin.” I had been there when Gray graduated to the Olympia Theatre in Dublin much to his disbelief but here he was in somewhere five times bigger! Surely the music would be diluted in the vastness.

>From the moment Gray walked out on his own to sit down at the piano and start an arena gig with the ballad, "The Other Side," my fears disappeared instantly and I was lost in an astonishing performance of defiance against all that was against this concert being possible. Just as he didn’t succumb to the pressures to make an album that would follow the huge sales of White Ladder so he has kept that artistic integrity intact and has translated it into a spectacle more amazing for its understatement. What you come away with after this gig is not some glitzy spectacular but three things much more impressive- great musicianship, great songs and that David Gray voice! Success has made no difference to David Gray apart from bigger crowds and a better bank balance. 

There are two things to write paragraphs on. First of all there was the quality of the musicianship. Clune, that mad boy with his bright Hawaiian shirts and his drums side on so that we can get an appreciation of every shape he throws, has been a side kick of genius for some time. Tonight, though, we add Tim Bradshaw. Here is the third member of this musically divine trinity, shifting instruments as quickly as the top of the charts change but playing much more competently than anything that reaches there! Bradshaw was formerly in The Fat Lady Sings and really does add serious soul, especially on piano  to the Gray sound. This was especially to the fore in the band’s “in front of the curtain” encore where they almost busked their way through various gems including Morrison’s "And It Stoned Me" to give us hints of Gray’s lineage. John Martyn’s "Go Down Easy" running into the Fun Boy Three’s "Lunatics In the Asylum" was the new "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" which itself went down a real treat though I personally cannot take a "Soft Cell" song seriously in such a canon of the man’s own work! 

The other thing was the songs. In the context of this set list, that did the range of the past ten years, the new songs stood out spectacularly. Those critics who have questioned that the new songs are as good as White Ladder need to remember that those songs took a couple of years to seep through the public consciousness. In three years time "The Other Side," "Real Love," "Be Mine," "Dead In the Water," and "Freedom" will prove as catchy but if anything much deeper in content than the crowd pleasers "Please Forgive Me," "Sail Away," and of course "Babylon," the latter having been diluted to the point that it has been used in Fame Academy and minimized to a pop song! 

Yes, we would love to hear "Birds Without Wings," "Let The Truth Sting," and a host of others but we like the White Ladder contingent need to move on. As we move we seem to travel with an artist who is more capable than we even imagined. You leave with these tunes seeping deep within your being, singing songs that are deceptively catchy and shaking your head as you sing and remember. And as my head shakes, my heart nods and my soul smiles; the big lad did it. He took on the expectations and whipped them big time. Bring on the stadiums…Oh aye and even the merchandise blew his peers away; an informative programme rather than just an extortionate set of photographs and great t-shirts. Go on Janice let me buy them all!