Customer Reviews

A New Day At Midnight

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

White ladder is one of my favourite albums of the last five years, and I was awaiting this album with as much apprehension as excitement. But I've been stunned to discover that this album is even better than White Ladder. A new day at midnight presents a more cohesive sound without sacrificing itself to excessive polish or over-production. It covers a larger emotional range than White Ladder. Here still are the beautiful sad songs, the introspective pondering songs, and the more upbeat songs like "Babylon" before them. "(Meet me on) the Other Side" is one of the most moving songs about death to be produced in a decade - while Peter Gabriel's recent meditation on the same subject, "I Grieve", is a powerful Baroque effort of eerie and subtle textures and layers of sound, Gray achieves an even more emotive effect as his raspy voice quivers over a ringing piano. It is a truly gorgeous way to end an album.

But there are some songs on this album that really ROCK. "Caroline" and "Real Love", while love songs, are melodic and thoughtful, but they capture the same spirit of Sheryl Crow's "Steve McQueen". "Caroline" is the first effective attempt at electronic country I have ever heard, and it is fantastic, helped along by some incredible pedal steel playing by B.J. Cole. Although Gray stacks the songs in a rather strange order on the album, cramming the more morose songs into the middle and packing the more upbeat songs onto the two ends, this album is more than worth the wait. It is a modern rock masterpiece.

David Gray's follow-up to White Ladder is unbelievable. The much-anticipated follow-up to his smash album, "White Ladder" is very strong and very soothing to listen to. The first track, "Dead In The Water" I believe is one the best on the album. It has an unbelievable beat and background and David Gray's voice is so strong. Personally, I believe the greatest song on the album is "Caroline". It is a very upbeat and catchy tune. The lyrics are meaningful. It has much more depth and quality than anything you would hear on the radio. All of the songs in-between are also well thought out and very talented. "Be Mine" and "Real Love" are sure to be favorite hits to David's true fans. The album ends with "The Other Side" a song that expresses the death of David's father. Many critics say the success of "White Ladder" can never be reached again by David. "White Ladder" has been David's most successful album to date and is also an unbelievable album. "A New Day At Midnight" is a different album than "White Ladder" as it should be. Why would you want to cut the exact same thing? David Gray is so talented and would never sell-out. He is a true artist who is true to his music and fans. He expresses his own life through his music and shares it with the world. "A New Day At Midnight" is the absolute best follow-up that could have ever been imagined to "White Ladder". Actually, it's better than I could have imagined. Thank you, David Gray!

1. Dead in the Water
2. Caroline
3. Long Distance Call
4. Freedom
5. Real love
6. Kangaroo
7. Last Boat
8. Knowhere
9. December
10. Be Mine
11. Easy Way to Cry
12. The Other Side

I will have to admit, Babylon got me hooked on Mr. Gray. I bought White Ladder, and over a few weeks, grew to love each and every recording on that album. When I heard that ANDAM was going to be released, I was excited yet tenative at the same time. I was worried that the euphoria I experienced while soaking up White Ladder would never be equaled. I bought the album, and reluctantly plopped it in my car stero.
After listening to Dead in the Water about 10 times, I felt that this album will certainly be as good as White Ladder. Caroline, Freedom, and Knowledge, while being eclectic, represent what strong song writing and a restrained touch at the master board can accomplish. However, the entire album sits strongly on Easy Way to Cry. It is well known that Mr. Gray is very adept at taking everyday raw emotion, feelings that rip through everone of us everyday, and simplifing it without losing its power. In Easy Way to Cry, he describes the Zero hour of a relationship, and how both parties involved, although obviously not new to the art of a breakup, have to learn to handle their emotions like a baby has to learn to crawl. You feel his loss, you feel his fear, and you feel his move towards recovery, however painful it may be.
Each song on ANDAM is skillfully arranged and emotionally true. I feel it is a strong step in the right direction for Mr. Gray, and if you liked White Ladder, don't miss out on this one. There are only a few writers in the world that can validate your emotion, any emotion, and not sound corny. David Gray is one of them.

White Ladder is by far one of the better CDs out there if you like wonderful songwriting and beautiful music. It blends poetry and music into a melange of beauty.
The four year break between White Ladder and A New Day at Midnight was well worth the wait.
Dead in the Water is a perfect way to start an album, upbeat but laying out a forewarning of what the rest of the album will be filled with: regret, love, resilience and pain (hey, it's David Gray, what else do you expect?). Caroline shows that David is willing to bring in even more synthesized music and recording loops into his music, while letting his voice and guitar carry the song. The background synthesized music does get a little repetitive, but David's voice still screams through the fuzz. Songs like Long Distance Call, Real Love and December recall the melancholy of A Century Ends, but in this album, there seems to be a light at the end of every tunnel. Even though the theme of Be Mine is quite sad, the song still has a way of making you smile and knowing that even if he doesn't get the girl, it's still going to be alright. This sense of resilency was not found on any previous album, and is a welcome addition to David Gray's repetoire of song writing. Still, David does not stray far from the formula that made White Ladder such a hit. The Other Side ends the album on a truthful, melancholy note, encompassing the song writing and emotional abilities of David Gray.
If you've been waiting 4 years for a follow up to White Ladder like I have been, then this album will not let you down. Although it may lack one single hit like Babylon was for White Ladder, it is more of a complete album, from start to finish covering a whole range of emotions and moods.

Once termed "the greatest lyricist since Dylan" by no less an authority on such matters than the estimable Joan Baez, David Gray -- who, with all due respect to Austin heroine Patty Griffin and the solidly amusing Ben Kweller, is the hands-down MVP of Dave Matthews' indie label ATO Records -- returns with A New Day at Midnight, a fascinating knockout that cements his reputation as his generation's songwriter to beat, and an album that shall hereafter serve as the template for following up a masterpiece with a masterpiece.

The former, of course, was Gray's 2000 global breakthrough White Ladder, a stunningly simple set of songs that served as a too-perfect-to-be-believed counterpoint to the vast ocean of Britney clones in which popular music was drowning at that time. Gray scored a crossover smash single with "Babylon" (but, hey, don't hold that against him -- even radio gets one right every now and then) and was singlehandedly credited with rescuing the fate of the male singer-songwriter, kicking open the door for John Mayer and Pete Yorn and Kweller and dozens of others to stumble gratefully through.

Ladder was a breath of fresh air for myriad reasons, not the least of which was its unpredictable structure. Thematically, it was all over the map, from the giddy pleasure of "Babylon" to the quietly desperate pleading of "This Year's Love" (definitely on the shortlist for vocal performance of the century) to the world-weary optimism of "Silver Lining," and all stops in between. The album's only real throughline --- and this is not at all an insult; classic albums (Nevermind, anyone?) have been built around far less --- was Gray's passion-drenched voice.

A voice that has only grown more confident and mature for Midnight, whose songs hold together with remarkable dexterity. Whereas Ladder was a moody stream-of-consciousness journey, Midnight is a riveting, cohesive album. Written in the wake of two seminal events in Gray's personal life -- the death of his father (to whom the record is dedicated) and the birth of his first child -- it sets up a canny premise and then surveys it completely.

Said premise: the irony that a new day begins at the darkest time, 12 sharp (hence the album title); or, if you prefer, that a fresh start arrives when you least expect it; or, if you prefer, that you get a clean slate only when the current one is full of chalk.

Neither of the aforementioned events are referred to directly in any of the twelve songs (though Gray's father seems to be the star of the album's opener, the tough "Dead in the Water"). Instead, he continues to play on the field he knows best: the male/female dynamic, the complex emotional algebra of which he has mastered as well as anyone who ever dared to pick up a pen. No matter. Lyrically, he dives into pools of those twin emotions, joy and sadness, and constructs with painstaking clarity a shattering full-length paean to grief, and pain, and survival, and courage.

So much so that the so-called "happy" songs seem slightly misplaced, though in truth, I'd only jettison "Caroline," which sounds like a Ladder leftover -- not to mention, a "Babylon" knock-off, and from a writer who has proven he knows better, no less -- and is as tonally inconsistent as a Josh Groban aria being dropped into the middle of a Dashboard Confessional joint. "Long Distance Call" and "Kangaroo" both have bouncy, pop veneers but dark, contemplative hearts (especially the latter, with lines like "lift me up above the stench" and "give me something I can't crush" and "nothing ever comes out good"). Similarly, even "Be Mine" --- the ostensible love song of the piece, especially if you don't count "Caroline" (which should have been replaced with the much more apropos b-side "Lorelei") --- retains a tinge of the record's sobriety.

One's main gripe -- if you must have one -- would almost certainly be Gray's stubborn reliance on drum machines and related synthetic instruments. To be sure, there are plenty of pianos and guitars and such to go around on Midnight, but to my ear, all of the midtempo tracks --- "Water" and "Call" to name two --- would have made twice the impression with honest-to-God drums underscoring them.

But these are minor quibbles. The stars of this show are Gray's terrific voice -- hurtling from raspy to gentle and back, the boy could sing the nutrition facts off of a can of Alpo and glue you to your chair -- and his dazzling wordplay. They work in breathtaking concert to tell a whole story, one that starts at midnight, with rage -- track one, the money shot, "it's like the old man says, we're dead in the water now" --- and climaxes at sunrise, with hope -- track eleven, "Easy Way to Cry," the gloriously redemptive declaration, "it's all right now, it's all right now," repeated four times, rapid-fire, closing the circle.

An ordinary songsmith would have stopped there and been perfectly content. But Gray offers his record a twelfth entry, and his story an epilogue: "The Other Side," a wrenching yet majestic opus that invites in and then ties up all the emotions with which he has been grappling. On the face of it, he's speaking to a lover, but he could easily be talking to his dead father and his newborn son --- the two figures that haunt the record, whether you're conscious of it or listening without prejudice --- telling them all, in unapologetic statements of fact, what he'll never be. It's a vocal and lyrical triumph, on an album that brims with them.

With White Ladder, David Gray created a tough act to follow. But with A New Day at Midnight, he has come up with a soul-shaking masterwork that, with any justice, will stand for decades. Is it impossible to match? Probably, but nobody on the current music landscape is more equal to the task.

David Gray has finally followed up on the break-out success of "White Ladder" with "A New Day at Midnight." The new record retains the use of electronica which was brought into "White Ladder," but the songwriting has returned to the David Gray of "A Century Ends" and "Sell, Sell, Sell"--more upbeat, biting sarcasm and bitter but compassionate lyrics demanding the ear of the world. Less love songs, more universally-themed songs. Stand-outs include: "Dead in the Water," a solid opening song and one of my favorites; "Freedom," a 7 minute-long ballad is a passionate show of Gray's political views; "Kangaroo" utilizes a unique rhythm sound to catch the listner's attention; "Real Love" is the only song I recognize from Gray's US tour that ended up on the album (Where's "All the Love"?), and is very worthy of praise; "December" is an atypical DG song, with David using an effect on his voice for (I think) the first time in his recording career (vocals reminiscent of Zeppelin's "No Quarter"); "Be Mine" is my pick for most likely hit single (sounds a little Train-esque), a good song to boot; and finally "The Other Side" is one of the most raw emotional songs on the album about the death of David Gray's father. With those as the high points, there is only one song that hasn't grabbed me yet, "Last boat to America" contains a bit too much 80's sounding keyboard/electro-glockenspiel or whatever that thing is, it isn't Gray's style, but perhaps it'll grow on me. To conclude, I'd like to say what bumped this album from 4 to 5 stars for me. Gray has expanded his use of different instruments (more piano, electric piano, even the electro-glockenspiel, strings, the flange on his voice in "December," and *egad* a horn combo for "Freedom," just to name a few). The fact that Gray hasn't tried to mimic his last album, has branched out into trying new ideas, and still writes some of the most deep, meaningful lyrics today warrants a top grade on this masterful new album.

Even on CD , David is essentially a live artist with no need for recording tricks. His amazingly powerful soulful , voice rises above us at concerts and that deeply personal signature and register is written too all over this exciting yet deeply thoughtful new album. David gave us most of the tracks from 'A New Day At Midnight' when I watched his latest concert here in his birthplace last night. The real pointer to the quality of his most recent writing was that the new tracks sit so completely at ease with the rest of his opus in terms of depth and beauty of lyrics and such compatible and often simple, yet varied musical arrangements all adding to the mystery of his prodigious on-going talent. There is a freshness about the new tracks that succeeds White Ladder , puts it in David's past, showing a charismatic and down to earth man, alive and well, working hard , trying to live genuinely for the moment and articulating how he feels through his current music . He's certainly interested in getting great sounds but , refreshingly not at the expense of wasting hours overproducing tracks in the studio. This stuff stands on its own lyrical and acoustic merits whether on your stereo or on stage; he was never in the in the business of sanitising emotions for an extra buck. David tells us the recording studio for 'Midnight' was really small but gives his new work that 'home-made' feel that he likes so much . I guess that helps draw us to his work too. The haunting sinister plain beauty of 'The Other Side' with its repeated melancholic piano solo, the love song 'Be Mine' (co-written with lovably eccentric ,much more than a drummer , Clune) with its gentle harmonies richly embroidered with subtle guitars and electric keyboard silks, which ebbs and flows to its memorable chorus. 'Easy Way to Cry' with simple crisp acoustic guitars ,gently drummed rhythm and sweet, quiet harmonies to carry it along. Pick any track . Quality comes as standard, words and music, because David Gray is himself and not afraid to show all the sides and sing about them for us, unpretentiously.

The great White Ladder was an album made in a flat in London, a great leap of music from Sell Sell Sell. And now A New Day At Midnight comes to shine. White Ladder is a very good album. These two albums however are completely different. It is true that David still uses the small amounts of samples and electronica. However, David is an artist, and that does not necesarily mean selling records. To me, an artist is one who takes experience and weaves it in to song or some form of art. For David Gray, this album weaves a meloncholic and hauntingly beautiful set of musical numbers. I think the liking of this record depends too on what type of mood or what life the listener has or is leading. I personally had gone through some difficult times. If you are expecting a false album which attempts to capture the essence that wove through White Ladder, you may find this slightly disappointing. However, if you are looking for a beautiful meloncholy which seems something to play on rainy days or around, well, around midnight, then I highly recommend this. I also ask that this not be compared to White Ladder as they are different. Sure the same recording technique might have been used but the outcome is what the listener is receiving.
"time out on the running boards, we're running through a world that lost its meaning" David sings, share in this gem if you want, if not, no one is forcing you.
Dave
"Honey now if I'm honest, I still don't know what love is"

David Gray is an outstanding songwriter that I discovered during my time in England. I absolutely love his work, his heartfelt sincere lyrics, and his penchant to write mesmerizing songs. White Ladder was a brilliant blossoming of his powers. Enfolded within the support of electronica, David produced his most entrancing and beautiful work to date. It also provided me the soundtrack to the last year of my life. Needless to say, I was eagerly anticipating this album.
It challenges. It disappoints a little at first listen because this is a David Gray that takes the hard road and chooses the difficult material. After five listens, I now find myself entranced all over again and looking forward to seeing him live in February. But songs like "Dead in the Water", "Freedom", "Caroline" (with its inclusive though silly "wooooo"), "No Easy Way To Cry", and "The Other Side" breaks one down as it uplifts and engages the listener, unlike the manufactured pop played on the radio. It just takes a few more judicious and open-hearted listens to get acquainted.
That being said, the album teeters on the edge of over-production this time around. I would recommend that David return to his sparse piano-acoustic guitar-drums roots on is next album. The electronica components are intriguing, but not as engaging sometimes as the earnestness of his earlier efforts. And a third album embracing those elements might be too many steps in the same direction. Still, this album is highly unlike 99% of the music currently available and highly recommended.

When you absolutely love a record and play it until you know every word, then put it into light rotation because you overdid it just a tad, you can count on being ambivalent about the artist's next release. You want to hear the next big contribution to a body of work, yet you're afraid it will not live up to those somewhere-out-in-the-stratosphere expectations.
David Gray's White Ladder was brilliant. The songs touched me to the core, and I loved it so much that it went from my car, into the computer tray, and to my bedroom cd player. My teenager "borrowed" it for a time, and I searched every cd tray in the house to find it. So, needless to say, the release of A New Day At Midnight found me in that state of ambivalence; looking forward to the first listen with a little cringe.
Like its predecessor, ANDAM has the trademark superior songwriting, the punchy, synthesized instrumentation, and the urgently emoting vocal style. The mood, however, is more sobering. Songs steeped in failed or unattained love (December, The Other Side, Freedom) predominate, and it leaves ANDAM with an overall depressing mood. Be Mine, the lone sweet love song, finds Gray pleading, "Be mine, be mine. Jumpin' Jesus, holy cow! What's the difference anyhow?" Now that's a guy after my own heart.
A New Day At Midnight will not let down any David Gray fans; there is enough strength in his vocals and songwriting to make up for a depressing mood.