DAVID GRAY
TEN years ago, toiling in obscurity at a storefront club on the Lower East Side called Cafe Sine, a younger David Gray sang in front of a sparse audience.
Despite that less-than-glorious New York debut, the singer/songwriter had Madison Square Garden dreams. On Friday, in front of a sold-out house at the Garden, Gray performed the kind of concert worthy of a decade of desire.
The Welsh singer/songwriter still straps into his six-string acoustic, but between the old days and now he’s mastered the art of arena rock. At his Garden bow, he had stage presence, his delivery was forceful and the two-hour-plus show was exciting.
You could feel that Gray was just about the happiest guy in the world, and his delight – ignited by performing at the Mount Everest of rock – was contagious. When he sang songs of woe, he was all smiles, and when he worked the anthemic numbers, such as “Sail Away” and Van Morrison’s coming-of-age tune “It Stones Me,” the guy was downright giddy.
In a way, this performance was a remarkable transformation from his snore-inducing Radio City performance in support of his “White Ladder” disc a couple of years ago.
At the Garden, no one was bored, no one nodded because the man slammed every number – even the difficult piano-driven song “Freedom,” inspired by his father’s death. On that obviously very meaningful tune, he laments “we’re running through a world that’s lost its meaning.” But rather than sounding like a whining wimp, he offered the lyric with earnest passion.
Gray’s music has changed over time. Numbers that were thin strum ‘n’ hum ditties have been beefed up with a variety of arrangements that tap rock, country and even jazz. In the past, when Gray performed his music, fans stayed glued to their seats. At the Garden, the house was on its feet dancing.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Gray’s distracting and annoying stick-twirling drummer, Craig McLune.
Maybe it was realizing a dream, or maybe Gray has had a performance epiphany, but from now on nobody’s going to question his ability to be intimate and soulful in the Garden or any other arena.