I am David

“We’re lowering ourselves into the hot bath of the seething waters that is the creative mind,” laughs David Gray when I ask how work is progressing on his new album. The quip is an example of the man’s good mood, perhaps surprisingly after a year of intense touring and family bereavement. By now Gray and several band members are almost a month into recording at his London HQ, but has he arrived this time with specific tunes ready to go or is it a more organic process that develops in studio?

“It’s usually a bit of both,” he explains, “except that because of the large amount of promotional work over the last couple of years I haven’t been doing as much writing as I had done previously. I’ve been telling myself I’ve got to catch up, so I’ve been playing through ideas and songs that are really in the first stage of development, some sound okay and some sound really shit but that’s usually how it goes. And the good news is that some of it is really good. But it’s true that the constant touring, although it’s necessary and it can be fun, gets you outside the loop of songwriting proper, so I’m trying to get back to that discipline. At the moment we’re finishing some things off and expanding on some newer ideas. The studio I’ve got in Clapham is the one we built when we were recording White Ladder, so it’s a comfortable and relaxed place with good associations for all of us and that helps the creative process along nicely. It’s small and cosy, which is more where we came from than the hurly-burly of the life that we’re now used to.”

Gray acknowledges that his band are crucial to the way in which the songs develop.

“I’ve got our drummer and keyboardplayer in the studio at the moment just to play around with the songs and establish a dynamic. It’s important to keep an eye on the bigger picture and realise that we’ll be performing these songs as a band, so the earlier the boys are involved the better. The beat, the bassline the lyric and the melody all have to match and gel.”

Can he tell us anything about the material he’s already put down?

“It’s really too early to say what will end up on the finished album, but today we’re working on a song called ‘Caroline’ which is a kind of electro-country ballad with a Can type industrial drum sequence. It sounds odd on paper but it’s a really exuberant piece. We’ve also recorded a song called ‘The Longest Time’ which is one that we gave a live airing on our recent tour and that song used to really piss me off because it wasn’t quite right but in the studio it’s come together a treat. There’s also a song called ‘Long Distance Call’, another one called ‘Last Boat To America’ which is a piano based number with a weird ‘80s type drum pattern. I’m pleased with what we’ve been coming up with.”

The sample song titles seem to suggest an element of finality or an attempt to deal with loss. Would David agree?

“I’ve had a pretty emotional year, people dying et cetera, but I’d be wary of categorising the songs at this stage. Many of them were written some time ago and when I’m playing them now they seem oddly prophetic. I don’t mean that in a grandiose way, but I do believe that when I’m writing I tap into my own future as much as I utilse past experience and feelings. Sometimes you can write a song and you’re not really sure what it means or where it’s going and a couple of years later it makes perfect sense. But to go back to your original question mortality is a common theme in what we’ve been working on so far. And again with recent world events it seems oddly resonant when a lyric or a feeling you get in a song takes on a perspective or an angle that you weren’t conciously trying to explore at the time of writing. But that’s one of the most rewarding parts of the process as the songs really do take on a life and an identity that can surprise and touch me in a way that I wouldn’t have expected."