David Gray - Sell, Sell, Sell
The War Against Silence #81
Copyright © 1996, glenn mcdonald

I have a short summary for this one, too, but it's even more tenuous than the other two. David Gray is, to me, what is left after I separate the Hothouse Flowers-ness out of the Waterboys. Mind you, I've already excised several other elements that the Waterboys demonstrably possessed, but which I didn't happen to care for, personally. There are, to me, only four real Waterboys albums. I count the first two, of course, where Mike Scott, Anthony Thistlethwaite and, by A Pagan Place, Karl Wallinger, work out their own stirring variant of then-new alternative. I skip This Is the Sea entirely in my mind, because though I know it's some people's favorite, I can't get through two minutes of it any more without snapping it off in exasperation with Scott for trying so hard to sing as badly as Dylan. I then count Fisherman's Blues and Room to Roam, the two neo-Celtic-trad records, which garnered mixed reactions from lots of people, myself not among them. And the appalling final album, Dream Harder, I think of as a Mike Scott solo record mislabeled, and file away with the same shudder I get from his blunt official solo debut. Most, then, of what I think of as the Waterboys' spirit, their epic spirituality, took its leave of the old casing some time in the early Nineties. Not all of it, however, is really represented by Songs From the Rain. Although This Is the Sea is the nexus of Scott's Dylan-esque folk-rock aspirations, hints of it bleed over into the first two albums, as well, and so even in the parts I like there is a stray sliver of soul that wants to bristle wordily, put on one of those neck-mounted harmonica braces and take to the streets, agitating for, or against, whatever occurs to it. It's this part that, grafted onto a whole human being for medical reasons, seems to me to explain David Gray's existence.

Not that you'd guess this from the cover of Sell, Sell, Sell. Wearing geeky glasses with number-of-the-beast price stickers over one lens, glaring intently into the camera, Gray looks like another home-recording prodigy from some neglected American suburb where nobody famous has ever played, let alone been born and lived. Flipping to the CD spine and noting that the album is released by EMI, it's tempting to guess that this is the hapless amateur's major-label debut, and he's having Unpronounceable Symbol-like second thoughts about the bargain already. As far as I can tell, though, none of this is even vaguely correct. Gray is Welsh, the album was recorded in a studio (several actually, though one of them is in Ithaca), and his prior album, Flesh (the second I know of, after A Century Ends), was released through both EMI and Virgin. The songs are about relationships and associated urban dilemmas, but none of them mention living with his parents, and none of them seem to have been written when he was fourteen.

The key element that links Gray and Scott in my mind is the precise inflection to Gray's voice, the way it seems to swell up towards notes and then away from them again, as if he's constantly undershooting the desired tone and gunning his lungs to compensate. His British accent primarily manifests itself as an oddly open-mouthed overtone when he warbles into tremolo. Instrumentally, this record is constructed like a folk album, but strategic substitution of torn-speaker electric guitar for acoustic keeps it from turning into Ellis Paul. Gray himself contributes guitars, keyboards and the harmonica, something called "Clune" handles drums, and producer David Nolte fills in the rest. This is a much smaller cast than performed on either of Gray's previous albums, and to me Sell, Sell, Sell benefits from the exchange of participant variety for greater focus. It's hard to tell whether Gray is actually getting any better at writing songs, as his style hasn't changed much over the three albums, and his odd singing style tends to kind of undermine melodies, but he was plenty good at songwriting to begin with, and if you happen to like his voice, the music will provide ample support for repeat listening. If this convincing simulation of life really did grow from a fragment of a soul, then I think the human soul may be a relative of the flatworm. But I've thought that for other reasons, too.

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