Album reviews: David Gray returns with Skellig, while Slowthai's Tyron disappoints
David Gray's new album, Skellig, has several Irish references.
Like many of us, David Gray had drawn up ambitious plans for 2020. He was set to (albeit belatedly) mark the 20th anniversary of his break-out album, , with a tour across Ireland and the UK that was to include a visit to Musgrave Park in Cork. But then events conspired to get in the way and his busy year was plunged into purgatory.
Yet he has taken comfort and inspiration from that stillness and you can hear it on his grippingly introspective 12th studio release. And though it might seem like a far-fetched comparison it is possible to draw a line between this record and other lockdown LPs such as Taylor Swift’s and Charli XCX’s .
As with those projects, interrogates the tension between the weird calm in which we all now exist and the sense, often unacknowledged, that terrible things are taking place out in the wider world.
For Gray it proves a golden formula on a collection that creeps up on you and is one of the most affecting to which he’s put his name. The title track, which opens the album, has a menacingly tip-toe quality that locates it somewhere between Bon Iver and Nick Drake. It’s lulling but never comforting, as is Dun Laoghaire, where Gray stands on the shoreline gazing into the beyond and wondering what’s out there and if it’s any different from the somnolence what has taken hold of the world.
The Skelligs have suffered middling press recently, having served as Luke Skywalker’s home in the lamentable The Last Jedi. Skellig should restore some balance to the force: not only is it a great lockdown LP – it is also sure to go down as a highpoint in Gray’s career.
Slowthai – aka Northampton rapper Tyron Frampton – looked set for a fast plunge back to obscurity after he disgraced himself at the 2019 NME awards by brawling with audience members. His second LP is in part a concept album about that debacle and the lessons learned, as made obvious with the rollicking (featuring Skepta).
The music is brusque and sometimes brutal yet there are glimmerings of self-awareness too. Frampton has stated that he gave up drinking after the NME incident (in which he also behaved inappropriately towards host Katherine Ryan). And amid the moshpit fervour moments of introspection come to the surface, as he delivers lines such as “Life got me in a headlock, back and forth like a hockey puck… lack of strength made me headstrong”.
But after a searing 2019 debut, Nothing Great About Britain, the flaw that runs like a pavement crack through is that it doesn’t represent enough of a progression. Having once run around the Mercury Music Prize ceremony with a rubber Boris Johnson head on a stick, it’s evident that Frampton has a lot to say about the condition of Britain and the world. , alas, falls short of the state of the nation address for which fans may have hoped. It’s a musical hangover from an artist who will surely do better now he’s engaging with life with a clear head.
