{"id":41028,"date":"2008-07-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/white-ladder\/"},"modified":"2008-07-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-30T00:00:00","slug":"white-ladder","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/white-ladder\/","title":{"rendered":"White Ladder"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to believe that David Gray hasn\u2019t appeared on the Vault until now, almost a decade after this album, his breakthrough, was released. Although Gray was a presence on the folk-rock scene throughout the \u201890s, it wasn\u2019t until 2000 with lead-single \u201cBabylon\u201d that his fourth album, 1999\u2019s White Ladder, <\/i>leapt to the top of the British single charts, with the album itself soon following (and in Ireland, Ladder <\/i>remains the best selling album of all time.) Meanwhile, across the pond, Dave Matthews made the album the first release off of ATO Records and, unsurprisingly, chart-topping ensued.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s really too hard not to love this gem of an album. Gray\u2019s vocals are deep, dipping into a somehow soothing growl, and his lyrics, which spin yarns of young love and slivers of hope rising out of lonely nights, are tender and reflectively honest.\u00a0 Sonically, too, this disc is well-textured but always measured:\u00a0 touches of electronics drive the beat of tracks like \u201cWe\u2019re Not Right\u201d and opener \u201cPlease Forgive Me,\u201d not to mention the slight shivers that peek through in \u201cBabylon\u201d — still, it\u2019s never overbearing, and it just serves to add a nice weight to the otherwise delicate strums of acoustic guitar and muted drum backbeats. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Though it (inexplicably) flopped as a leadoff single, \u201cPlease Forgive Me\u201d is probably the most resonant track here. I\u2019d spent years shrugging off this album after hearing it played to death on my mother\u2019s stereo when it was first released, but after \u201cPlease Forgive Me\u201d made its way into Scrubs, <\/i>I found myself hooked (so much for my rebellion). Propelled by a catchy drumbeat and low flickers of piano, this manages to rise above the traditional ballad with its haunting sense of urgency. \u201cI got half a mind to scream out loud \/ I got half a mind to die \/ So I won\u2019t ever have to lose you, girl \/ Won\u2019t ever have to say goodbye,\u201d Gray croons, tapping into the lovelorn, searching heart at the center of us all <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cBabylon\u201d most likely needs no mention, save that its lyrics paint a wonderfully evocative picture of a London weekend looking for — something, a love to fill the loneliness of moving through the streets as \u201call the lights are changing green to red\u201d and the \u201csky is fading red to blue \/ I\u2019m kicking through the autumn leaves \/ And wondering where it is you might be going to.\u201d\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Gray follows his omnipresent single with a string of hits: \u201cMy Oh My\u201d launches out with the visceral lines, \u201cSeems these days I don’t feel anything \/ Less it cuts me right down to the bone \/ What on earth is going on in my heart?\u201d and builds on them with acoustic guitar and a layer of high, melodic synths shining in the background, turning this into a boundless appeal for love to keep the heart warmed. Next, \u201cWe\u2019re Not Right\u201d has an appropriately swaggering beat, with its refrain \u201cCan\u2019t tell the bottle from the mountaintop\u201d and Gray\u2019s lilting, almost mournful vocals. Meanwhile, \u201cNightblindness\u201d is sparse and hollow, outfitted with only stilted strums of acoustic guitar and Gray\u2019s weighted-down voice, with the fourth mention of plummeting or cold stones in almost as many tracks lending another layer of heaviness.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The overlong \u201cSilver Lining\u201d is probably the biggest stumble here (though the final track, a retelling of \u201cBabylon\u201d called \u201cBabylon II\u201d is nice, but not all that vital); \u201cLining,\u201d likewise, isn\u2019t particularly offensive, it\u2019s just not interesting either even despite the promise of its wide-eyed lyrics at the start, which isn\u2019t helped by a section of meandering instrumentation near its end. Still, it\u2019s buoyed by the rain-soaked, punchy beats of the title-track and the sweet, piano-based single \u201cThis Year\u2019s Love,\u201d on which Gray\u2019s mellowed vocals truly shines.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Threads of David Gray\u2019s sound still wind their way through the latest crop of singer-songwriters: I recently reviewed Jay Nash, who has been touted as America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>\u2019s answer to Gray, while moments of this disc sound a little reminiscent of Coldplay. He is poised to release another album soon, following a return to form with 2005\u2019s Life In Slow Motion <\/i>after the slightly slammed follow-up to White Ladder, A New Day At <\/i>Midnight<\/i><\/st1:time>. <\/i>Still, even if he never put another note to paper, Gray already has a shining legacy in this album: hopeful, melodic, and memorable, this is one of those times where the charts were entirely right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8244],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41028","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-gray","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41028"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}