000-david_gray-foundling-2cd-2010.nfo
ARTiST: David Gray
ALBUM: Foundling
BiTRATE: 157kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: Polydor
GENRE: Pop
SiZE: 85.67 megs
PLAYTiME: 1h 12min 21sec total
RiP DATE: 2010-08-13
STORE DATE: 2010-08-13
Track List: Disc #1/2
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01. Only The Wine 2:52
02. Foundling 5:29
03. Forgetting 4:18
04. Gossamer Thread 5:11
05. The Old Chair 2:55
06. In God's Name (For Bryan Pt. 1) 3:43
07. We Could Fall In Love Again 4:26
Tonight
08. Holding On 5:10
09. When I Was In Your Heart 2:37
10. A New Day At Midnight 2:46
11. Davey Jones' Locker 5:11
Track List: Disc #2/2
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01. Fixative (For Bryan Pt. 2) 4:07
02. Morning Theme 2:43
03. The Dotted Line 3:43
04. A Million Years 3:11
05. Who's Singing Now 3:02
06. Old Father Time 4:01
07. Indeed I Will 3:28
08. A Moment Changes Everything 3:28
Release Notes:
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Foundling -- the stunning new effort by internationally acclaimed
singer-songwriter David Gray -- begins with those evocative and somewhat
mysterious words. What follows is an extraordinary song cycle of rare and
timeless power that bears a rather fitting title. As people today may or may not
remember, the word "foundling" is defined as "an infant found after its unknown
parents have abandoned it." And as Gray puts it with a warm laugh, "Foundling
sort of arrived at my door without my asking it to, so it felt very appropriate
for this album."
In a sense, Foundling also marks another notable arrival -- the second coming of
David Gray's own second coming -- and one that truly "sprung like a wild orchid"
in its own right. By 2005, Gray had already enjoyed what has been a rather
distinguished career as a singer-songwriter and recording artist, having sold
more than 12 million albums, including his global left-field smash, 1998's White
Ladder, which remains the single best selling album in Irish history. Gray had
by this point already won two Ivor Novello Awards, a Q award, two Brit
nominations and a GRAMMY nomination.
But not a man or artist content to ever rest on his laurels, Gray decided that
the time has come to shake things up in a significant way. So in 2006, David
Gray decided to disband his longtime backing group, and to attempt to reconnect
with his music before recording his excellent 2009 album Draw The Line with a
new group of players at his studio The Church. "Draw the Line was essentially
about the band, and four people playing together in a room," says Gray. "But you
can't just keep going for unlimited takes. So on days when I felt everyone was
getting a bit worn down and frayed at the edges -- and that it might be good to
give everyone a little space -- I'd go into the studio on my own or maybe with
one other person. I'd either work on tracks we already recorded or try to record
other songs with just me on piano or guitar. That's a lot of what eventually
became Foundling.
In essence, Foundling became an alternate musical universe to Draw The Line. As
Gray puts it," Foundling was an album done in slices of time in between band
recording sessions. Eventually, I had the thought of recording and then mixing
two separate albums during the same time period, so I then went back and took a
closer look at the tracks and recorded a few overdubs and attempted to add a few
finishing touches so that they sounded more complete. That's how Foundling
became like a tapestry that I hung on the other side of The Church. And I kept
walking over and making little marks on it, and before you knew it, what started
off as a side project was holding my attention as well as the main work."
In the end, Foundling looks like the most gorgeous and minimalist musical
tapestry that David Gray has ever created -- one that alternately suggests the
early work of The Band, Randy Newman and Tom Waits, but without sounding
remotely like a piece of nostalgia. Like the recent productions of T-Bone
Burnett, this is music that seems to exist almost outside of time, yet feels
fantastically modern and stripped of all unnecessary varnish. "Because I've done
so much recording lately, I think you eventually get braver," says Gray. "You
think `I can go even further with this - I can do even less.' So there's
definitely a sense here of reducing the songs to their absolute bare minimum.
It's that core notion of getting to the gist of the song. On Draw The Line and
in a different way here, I didn't concern myself with trying to use very current
sounds that might date badly. I just focused on getting the song down by the
simplest means possible."
Working this way was ultimately very emancipating for Gray. "We were very
unfussy on this record," he says. "I felt like this was my private record. I
didn't get too picky with the vocals, and I didn't have to think about things
like potential airplay. So I threw all of that stuff out and it's actually a
wonderfully liberating feeling. You think, `This hasn't got a cat in hell's
chance of getting on the radio, so let's make this the way we feel it ought to
be made. We just made it the way we wanted to."
When it's pointed out that he was always a bit of a left-field success story,
and that Foundling might find a home on the airwaves simply because it's so
good, he laughs and adds, "I could see these songs doing well at the cinema or
maybe on TV because there is a cinematic quality to some of the stuff. Maybe
that could unlock the record in some way, but it's hard to imagine it getting on
the radio as it stands. But who cares anyway? Fuck it, we love it."
"Frankly, I can't wait for this bloody thing to come out because I'm still
tearing my hair out about what to leave in and not," Gray adds with a hearty
laugh. "It's basically the record I've been wanting to make for a long time and
it's as strong a statement as White Ladder in its own way. The album is like a
stepping off point for what might happen next. It's like I'm really putting my
money where my mouth is with this one." FOUNDLING: SONG-BY-SONG WITH DAVID GRAY:
ONLY THE WINE: "Only The Wine" was born out of a little guitar motif with a
slight nod toward "Norwegian Wood." That first line was key: "Sprung like a wild
orchid." I thought that the whole song sounded like something woody -- something
you'd find growing in a field. When we recorded "Only The Wine," the song had
this beautiful warm sound. Everyone was playing quite tentatively and innocently
because we hadn't settled into that whole "We know what we're doing" feeling. So
this song had the sense I love of players still reaching for something.
FOUNDLING: This was a key track because of the soundscape of it. It's just a two
chord thing, and yet it feels like new territory to me. For me, "Foundling" is a
sort of a road marker left at the end of the last recording session to tell me
where to start next time around. Like, "Start there next time and just keep
going further out." There's no use trying to unwrap the lyrics for this song or
"Only the Wine" -- it's just bring your own pictures because that's all I'm
creating here, and make your own meaning too. FORGETTING: This one is
self-explanatory to the point that it would be stupid to explain it when it's so
obvious what it's about. The lyrics came first for a change here. What happened
during this whole period of this recording is that the joy of words and language
and writing came back to me full force. That's still with me, and I think that's
where I'm strongest and it's where I'll be concentrating a lot of my energies
next time around. So I think there may be a few more lyrics first scenarios
around the corner for me.
GOSSAMER THREAD: This song came to me some time ago, and I just got this really
strong picture of a person, this semi-derelict person, just drifting from city
to city, hanging on to life as if by a gossamer thread. We all know how that
feels sometimes. In terms of recording, as a piece of playing, it took a lot of
effort to get it all in one take, and by the end of the session we were so worn
out we just put it to one side and didn't listen to it for months. It was the
very last thing we mixed on the record, and when we put up the faders it was the
most pleasant surprise of the whole mixing session. It sounded great and it just
sort of mixed itself.
IN GOD'S NAME: It's the song I wrote to my friend Bryan Glancy, an English
singer songwriter who also inspired Elbow's record The Seldom Seen Kid. He was a
great character and a dear friend to us all, and he died shortly after I wrote
this song with him in mind. "In God's Name" became part one, and I wrote another
part that will be an extra track on the album called "Fixative," which together
represent my own little homage to Bryan. A very simple idea and I don't know how
to elaborate on it. What brought the track together was we got the hurdy gurdy
man in to play on it. That's something you don't get to say every day.
THE OLD CHAIR: When I talk about how minimal Foundling is, I must remember "The
Old Chair" is on there with a huge orchestra that kicks in at the end. It's a
bit early Tom Waits that one, and proudly so. The song is about old people and
in a way it's definitely a cousin of some of those great songs John Prine's
written like "Hello In There." It's obviously not a very popular subject for a
pop song, with a few exceptions like "Eleanor Rigby." The reason the song got
started was unusual. I was doing some writing for an animation project to do
with these rescue dogs, and the original working title for the project was "The
Old Chair." So that's where the title came from, even though it had nothing to
do with the final song. Still, I quite like having an assignment to work on, it
can change the parameters of your thinking in a very useful way.
WE COULD FALL IN LOVE AGAIN TONIGHT: Well, this is a very romantic song, and I
haven't written many of those in recent years. And in this context, it was
almost gutsy to feature some breathy saxophone on this track. I was thinking of
"When Teardrops Fall" by Bob Dylan from Oh Mercy. Or maybe Stan Getz's saxophone
on "Girl From Ipanema." That was what I wanted there. Sometimes I like to record
without using bass because I feel you can get a starker more emotional result.
Bass can sometimes normalize things and make a song seem too comfortable and
familiar.
HOLDING ON: This came from the session when the new band first came together --
the same session as the title track from Draw The Line was recorded. Neil
MacColl's guitar part here is beautiful. I've written a song called "Hold On,"
"Hold On To Nothing," and now "Holding On," so I'm getting some grief from the
boys, like, "Write some decent titles, Dave."
A NEW DAY AT MIDNIGHT: This song actually dates back to the album A New Day At
Midnight from 2002. That' when I wrote it, and it gave its title to that album.
This is the oldest recording that's on the album. I kept this one back because I
thought there was a better moment for the song, and this is it. I'm getting some
grief about this title too because it's the same as the 2002 album. It's a
simple, uplifting kind of song, and I'm very happy about the horn arrangement,
which I think came out great.
WHEN I WAS IN YOUR HEART: This song I wrote a good few years ago, and it just
had something. We did it up as a band version first and I felt we hadn't really
taken it any further, so then I stripped it back. Lestyn Polson, my producer,
had so much to do with the colour of this record and the soundscape of it. He
did a brilliant job of presenting the simple things. We used a lot of old reverb
effects, and you can hear a good example on the vocals in this track. A strange,
quirky little song, and I'm glad it's finally going to see the light of day.
DAVEY JONES' LOCKER: This whole song came pretty much fully formed out of a
soundcheck jam. It virtually wrote itself. Then afterwards I went back and added
a few more lines to it, and tidied up a few loose ends. Then I got the same
people from onstage into the studio and we got it down 'live' in a couple of
takes. I can't really unravel the imagery too much without making it sound
trite, but the lyric describes heading down under the surface of things into a
strange and dreamy world.
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