Intrinsically, David Gray’s music is not built for a communal environment. Each album is a one-on-one personal journey, holding your hand and taking you through emotions you wouldn’t choose to experience alone: stomach-wrenching disapppointment, freefalling happiness, relaxed humour.
To transform this intimacy into large-scale entertainment is some task, but one which Ireland’s favourite Welshman has improved on as the years go by, simply because more time means more material means those less suited to shared appreciation can be dropped.
And it’s tight. In his second trip to Ireland in just over as many months, nothing pre-White Ladder is played, and most of the set is singles or tracks like ‘Real Love’ which should have been singles. Opening with the chilling ‘Alibi’ from new album Life In Slow Motion, it’s clear the new album has its part to play, and its cream – ‘Hospital Food’ ‘The One I Love’ and ‘Nos Da Cariad’ - is aired and slots in neatly.
Throughout it all, Gray himself is effortless. Six years after he first played The Point, it’s still hard to believe that that collossal voice is coming from that unassuming man with the neck problem. He speaks little to the crowd, but when he does we’re all his mates: after an extended version of ‘Please Forgive Me’ which goes over particularly well, he quips, “If I had 50 of those, I’d rule the world’. They jam, they joke, they mess up – which only adds to the show’s endearing quality.
Ending with very David Gray-sounding cover of The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m In Love’, there’s not even time to play ‘Be Mine’ or ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’. But he has to leave a couple of tricks up his sleeve to try and top tonight’s performance when he returns for the second-sold out show the next day. He’ll have a hard time trying.
Pic: Graham Keogh