2. A Century Ends
3. Debauchery
4. Let The Truth Sting
5. Gathering Dust
6. Wisdom
7. Lead Me Upstairs
8. Living Room
9. Birds Without Wings
10. It's All Over
Hardly anybody--with the notable exception of Irish songstress Mary Black, who subsequently turned out a rather splendid cover version of "Shine" some years later--bought A Century Ends, David Gray's debut album. Emerging in 1993, at a time when an uncharacteristically contented British public was bending its knees and twanging its braces along to the larksome antics of Britpop, there was little space on the living-room shelf for the torturous boudoir ponderings of a young-but-gnarly Dylan soundalike. There are pretty moments, but this is a record where angst and lust reign supreme--"Debauchery" is a salty tale of having it away on a rug with an alcoholically-lubricated lady ferry boat operative (sung in a voice pitched somewhere between the Waterboy's Mike Scott and celebrated naval fish-finger salesperson Captain Birdseye) while "Lead Me Upstairs" is a courtship tale which dispenses with first-date niceties. Britain later changed its mind about David Gray--after all, more people in the UK own his 1998 album White Ladder than own a ladder--but A Century Ends is a surprising rediscovery, a record begging further investigation for anybody whose idea of a good night in involves the solitary rolling of Rizlas along to Astral Weeks or Blood on the Tracks. -- Kevin Maidment