For an album that aspires to such an even-keel musically, David Gray's Life in Slow Motion becomes a struggle to evaluate.
On one hand, Gray has expanded his sound-the album comes drenched in strings and a rich piano that can easily absorb the listener.
On the other, Slow Motion displays Gray moving away from personal topics and into abstraction. While Gray treats his topics as impenetrable fortresses that he must dance around with equal generality, lyrically, he occasionally falls into the realm of trite adolescent poetry.
The effect of producer Marius De Vries, known for his work on recent albums by Bj??rk, Madonna and Rufus Wainwright, is readily apparent. It is easy to write off Slow Motion as nothing more than soothing easy listening, but there is a complexity in the instrumentals that unravels itself on further review-an unexpected complexity, coming from a guy known for his low-fi acoustic guitar and drum machine sampling.
Gray has obviously been listening to recent soundscape artists like Sigur R??s, and his music has benefited from the influence.
In Slow Motion's new, lush production style, Gray's vocal delivery fits in surprisingly well. Back in 2000, when he released White Ladder and gained popularity with the single \Babylon,"" his voice was one of his few distinctive characteristics. On Slow Motion, his crooning floats smoothly over crisp piano ballads, but it often contains a gravelly base, a bit of imperfection that penetrates the fantastic compositions backing him.
But all the production and vocal tricks in the world cannot make up for some of Gray's lyrics. Lines like ""Tell the repo man / and the stars above / you're the one I love,"" elicit a cringe-an elongated cringe at that, given Gray's penchant for repeating simplistic lines. In one refrain he repeatedly yells ""you're the one I love"" ad nauseam.
Thankfully, these moments only show up on Slow Motion from time to time. The majority of the time, Gray's lyrics are merely pedestrian.
In many cases, the mood Gray strives for would be as easily achieved if he was singing in unintelligible Welsh, because his voice serves as an instrument well. His lyrics actually lend little to the point he tries getting across.
That is not to say that Gray completely fails to conjure up a few lines of worthwhile imagery. One of the finer tracks on Slow Motion is ""Nos da Cariad"" (""Goodnight Sweetheart"" in Welsh). In it, Gray wails, ""The sun above the cotton grass is sinking down like lead / the seagulls know the truth of it and scream it overhead,"" before finally coming to a light reassurance-""Go to sleep my one true love / our glory lies ahead.""
The album crawls along at a deliberate pace, with the exception of ""Hospital Food."" This track, eighth on the album, provides a nice breather from the expansive, ordered compositions that precede it. Drums and guitar are more prominent, making ""Hospital Food"" one of the few tracks that will sound familiar to Gray fans.
It is laudable that Gray has progressed in his artistic endeavors, instead of replicating the basic singer/songwriter acoustic style of White Ladder and ""Babylon"" for financial gain. Tracks like ""Now and Always"" show Gray's capability to craft music with far more depth than many would expect.
If nothing else, Slow Motion can be viewed as a step forward in Gray's maturation as a complete artist-a process that, while containing some blemishes, should be considered a success, nonetheless.
