David Gray’s new album, Life in Slow Motion, is best characterized by its layers of desperately melancholic lyrics that sail on top of seas of symphonic instrumentals—instrumentals so thick with sound that they burst like a sad overeater swelling with pleasurable confections. It’s depressing but sweet.
In “Now and Always,” Gray sings, “Hey little baby / I’ll hold you close / We’ll glide like ghosts … you’re in my mind baby / now and always.” Here Gray combines lyrics of immobility and death with a melody that develops and changes drastically.
“Now and Always” moves from a lazy harmonica, desolate and lacking in energy, to a vibrant and dominantly percussive ensemble. In this song, and in many, Gray seems set on combining opposites and raising the elements of depression and smallness to ecstasy and grandeur. The lyrics, most of which are bleak, often express one thing while the music indicates the opposite.
“There’s not a great deal of hope running through the album,” said David Gray in an interview with National Public Radio. “The uplifting moments are musical ones … a symphonic development … Where the stark and rather melancholic picture stood suddenly there is this kind of sense of release.”
When the lyrics of Life in Slow Motion become almost intolerably heavy, a complicated arrangement of instruments (ranging from acoustic guitar to synthesizers and cellos) straps the music on a rocket and shoots it toward the sun.
The lead track of the album, “Alibi,” begins with a single unwavering synthesized, flute-like pitch with strings circling around in a mournful minor. It then jumps to Gray’s smoky voice accompanied by a lonely piano line. By the end of the piece, synthesizers, guitar, strings, a full chorus of backup vocals and percussion burst into an arrangement worthy Mozart.
By combining hopeless lyrics with the joy of music, Gray creates an album very satisfying to any psyche. He seems to try to unify two extremes of the human condition. In “Disappearing World” Gray sings, “We’re threading hope like fire / Down through the desperate blood … Cross the great divide.” Gray connects life with death and happiness with misery producing paradoxes quicker than the holy trinity.
The disparity in Life in Slow Motion may be difficult for some to put aside, because concepts like death don’t typically flow well with triumphant fortes. However, Gray has skillfully welded numerous diverse emotional materials into a seamless opus, creating a masterful album.
