David Gray -‘Mutineers’ (iht Records)
Like Coldplay, it’s perhaps a little too easy to stereotype David Gray. Music for people who don’t buy much music and what they do is from motorway service stations, people who are permanently glued to Radio 2, who’d rather go to V Festival than Glastonbury…the list could go on.
And it’s unfair on the man himself. Not only that, as a late thirty-something (there! I’ve said it!) I think it’s rather an ageist stereotype. I don’t buy my music from motorway service stations, mind you.
The only problem is…this album is as dull as anything. Now, I enjoyed a number of songs off White Ladder, itself now fifteen years old. It didn’t change the world, but there were some good, solid songs. It is of course missing the point entirely to grumble that Gray’s music is not radical or confrontational. However, Mutineers makes White Ladder sound like a groundbreaking record by comparison.
It’s not entirely without merit. There’s a lovely arrangement on ‘Last Summer’ and ‘Birds Of the High Arctic’ is a really good song. But the absolute nadir is reached on ‘Snow in Vegas’ with it’s drawn-out, cliched lyrics.
I genuinely wanted to like this album. I wanted to be able to hold it up as an act of defiance to say that Gray had produced a good record, and that it was just snobbery that stopped people from liking it. Unfortunately, rather like the latest Coldplay album, it’s just boring.
**
Mutineers is out now on iht Records
