David Gray
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
The first time David Gray played this building, in 1999 – when it was known as the Point Theatre – he was riding the crest of a tsunami that the wondrous White Ladder had generated, a slow submergence of Irish shores that soon became a tidal wave of success globally.
Dublin gigs are always a homecoming of sorts for Gray, who has been embraced wholeheartedly as an honorary Irishman by a population who made White Ladder the biggest-selling album of all time in this country.
Yet while Gray could easily have peddled out rehash after rehash of that record over the years, instead he chose a different path – one that has taken him in some unexpected directions over the past 25 years or so.
Saturday’s sold-out 3Arena show is off the back of his 13th album, Dear Life, released in January to positive reviews, but the tour is titled Past & Present; there will be no set list dominated by new tunes tonight.
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It’s just as well; as Gray notes several times, this is a boisterous crowd gunning for singalongs and dancing – which occasionally seems to irk him slightly. At one point he jokes that it’s “like playing the biggest bar in the world” with the constant stream of chatter and people going to and from the bar; at another he fumbles lyrics because he is too busy “watching you lot fannying around”.
Still, there will be plenty of time for dancing. Now 56, the smartly besuited Gray has nicely assumed his elder-statesman role, and the early part of the set takes in his more mature numbers, including the new song After the Harvest, the sombre piano ballads Slow Motion and Ain’t No Love and the excellent Leave Taking, a sprawling, loose-limbed affair that takes a leaf out of Van Morrison’s songbook and sees his excellent band earn their pay packets with flawless multipart harmonies.
A smattering of White Ladder songs, including the title track and the loungey Silver Lining, pick up the pace, while a potent Please Forgive Me is the first to rouse the fully seated crowd from their chairs.
Once the crowd chant the first “Olé olé olé” there’s no going back; Say Hello Wave Goodbye, Gray’s enduring cover of the Soft Cell song, marks another huge singalong moment, although the set list flounders somewhat with the shimmering ballad The First Stone and the schmaltzy Be Mine, which remains the worst song that he has ever committed to tape.
Still, on the sublime Shine – a rare live cut taken from his 1993 debut – his band departs the stage, allowing for a stunning solo turn that exhibits the vocal firepower and charisma of one man and his guitar. He amusingly struggles to harness attention for a touching story about his late father that pre-empts Last Boat to America (“so you can’t just piss off to the bar after I finish telling this”, he playfully warns) but soon has them back onside with a cover of Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough, dad dancing and all.
From there on in, it’s a home run of hits: Babylon and This Year’s Love both lift the roof off 3Arena; there’s even an unexpected yet delightful cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s Three Babies in the mix, and Sail Away sends the audience floating home on a sea of feelgood endorphins. It’s a song that Gray must have sung a thousand times, yet he can’t stop himself grinning from ear to ear at the sight of more than 10,000 people joining him in its rousing chorus.
The good news for him – and them – is that he’ll be back in May to do it all over again.
