The Dawning Of A New Gray

David Gray is full of surprises this chilly spring morning. He’s plain-talking and down to earth – not at all the star-crossed troubadour. Also, he gives good footie metaphor.

“I’m standing in the tunnel, waiting to run out,” says the 50-year-old singer-songwriter. “Hopefully there’s a crowd and they’re going to roar.”

We’re discussing his excellent new record, Gold In A Brass Age. Gray’s most “electronic” album since the twinkling vistas of 1998’s White Ladder – yes, please do take a moment to feel ancient – his 11th long-player is a triumph but a different sort of triumph.

Gray has adopted a less is more approach, a contrast to the maximalism of 2014’s Mutineers. As with all his projects the inspiration is a desire to try something different. So he’s set to one side his guitar – though he does pick it up now and again – and instead woven a fascinating tapestry of bleeps, whirrs and loops, over which he croons and coos.

“You can’t keep going down the same track. It becomes dull. If Man United won every game, nobody would watch them.” The life-long Red Devils supporter (he spent his early childhood in Manchester before moving with his family to Wales) pauses a heartbeat. “Only they are now! Boom boom.”

The comic timing is impeccable – another thing Hot Press wasn’t expecting. Perhaps it’s a sign that Gray has mellowed since the ’90s, when, as fans of early LPs A Century Ends and Flesh, will recall he was a tortured songsmith among tortured songsmiths.

One difference between the Gray of today and the angrier young man of yore is that he’s at peace with nostalgia. As White Ladder became a smash – going on to be the biggest ever-selling album in Ireland and then moving a further 2.9 million units in the UK – he found the overnight transformation in his fortunes discombobulating.

Gray had by then settled into his niche as the awkward outsider. Belting it out to the gallery wasn’t his thing. To say he actively enjoyed being feted in Ireland and ignored everywhere else would be an exaggeration. Yet these contrasting fortunes certainly stoked a fire. After he broke through, he felt temporarily unmoored – and if not quite resentful of his newfound a-listerdom, then certainly ambivalent towards it.

That’s all changed. The 20th anniversary of White Ladder was a big moment. Following the completion of his forthcoming tour, he plans on marking the occasion, perhaps by getting together with his old drumming mucker Clune. “It’s really nice to return to those songs now,” he says. “It’s a sign that whatever tensions were once there have dissipated. It was a crazy story and it happened to me. It’s amazing and only a good thing. Ubiquity is something you have to grasp and deal with in your own way. The fact it’s the 20th anniversary [of White Ladder] feel very positive.”

He also cherishes those formative struggles in Ireland. An early gig, at Nancy Spain’s in Cork, attracted a crowd of approximately a dozen. But he kept coming back and the audiences grew. He sensed something was afoot when he arrived at Whelan’s in Dublin, wondering about the queue along the road. They were there for him – turned on to his music by the relentless championing of RTE’s No Disco.

“I treasure that period,” he says. “I can see, in the light of everything that happened since, that there was a carefree aspect to it. Those early gigs in Ireland were amazing.”

It’s been said Cork Opera House is his favourite room to play. That is quite a brag for Leeside considering Gray has headlined Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and Radio City Music Hall in New York. “I was asked it once about my favourite venue. It’s kind of a silly question. But it’s true that I’ve had multiple special nights there. When you go down south and west, out of Dublin, you find something different. You get this readiness to connect that is breathtaking when it comes together.

“I remember looking at [the Opera House] on my way to my early gigs in Cork. You’d drive past and see Van Morrison was playing Tuesday night. And we’d be off to some mental venue around the corner, Sir Henry’s or whatever. And to finally play there [the Opera House] on the White Ladder tour…it felt like a really big deal.”

The electronic fluttering of Gold In A Brass Age connects to his past in ways that go beyond the mere music. Outside of Ireland, Gray initially found a fanbase was among clubbers who embraced his songs as the ultimate chill-out soundtrack.“White Ladder was very related to club culture,” he says. “The first sense I had that something was happening outside Ireland was people coming back from Goa and Thailand and going, ‘everyone’s playing your record’. It was a chill-out after the gig, after you’ve been banging your head against the wall for six hours. You’ve calmed yourself down and you’re listening to this.

“I do think clubbers know their shit. A lot of electronic musicians have quite catholic tastes. I had already become friends with Orbital [Gray and Orbital’s Phill Hartnoll are married to two sisters].

“At that point I was playing anything but where I was supposed to be playing. It’s true I did a few gigs at the Mean Fiddler acoustic room. But I was also playing all these clubby places that were totally incongruous. The idea was to take this thing that was deeply unfashionable and put it in a completely different context to see what people made of it. The gigs were good even if some of the people were a bit off their face.”

Brexit and Donald Trump were unfolding towards the end of the writing of Gold In A Brass Age. He winces when the twin-headed harbingers of the apocalypse are brought up.

“All these things filter in,” he says. “I will no doubt be regurgitating some of the horror in future songs. We are in a period of unprecedented… I don’t know how you even describe it. It’s almost as if we’re being eaten alive by our demons and the Americans are being eaten alive by the demons of daytime TV and reality TV. Everyone is paying the price of the dumbing down of everything – of politics, journalism. It’s all been dumbed down to such an idiotic level that idiotic thoughts can prevail.”

Gold In A Brass Age is out now. David Gray tours Ireland in April and returns to play Live at the Marquee in July.