by Jim McCoy

Those fans in the American contingent have been eagerly awaiting the return of Welsh-born, English-raised singer/songwriter David Gray to the shores of the United States. News of a new studio album to follow-up 2003's A New Day at Midnight slowly began to trickle across the worldwide web during the past two months, and an official announcement soon confirmed message board speculation that David was embarking on a brief tour of the United States during late summer. (Alas, electronic correspondence from the official mailing list announcing pre-sale dates for tickets arrived in the inboxes of many fans after the dates of the pre-sale period.)

Mr. Gray booked some very intimate venues this time around, and Philadelphia's Merriam Theater is no exception. Located on Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts, this small space serves as the home of Pennsylvania Ballet (and other dance companies) as well as a venue for Broadway plays. Every seat in the house is a good seat, with small semi-private balconies close to each side of the stage complimenting those in the center.

Anticipation ran high as the crowd began to be seated and realized that they would be treated to a most intimate evening with the headliner, who had brought a host of capable musicians along (including an electric cellist) in addition to the popular and talented collaborator/drummer/percussionist/backing vocalist/sidekick Clune. (Indeed, the venue is a size such that Mr. Gray and Clune offered some very witty responses to verbalizations from the crowd.) Unfortunately, a solid performance by David and his band was offset by a setlist that found Mr. Gray playing only a handful of songs on the acoustic guitar as he opted to forgo any material from the first three albums in the David Gray catalogue - the brilliant A Century Ends included.

The show opened shortly after 9:00 p.m. as David strapped on an electric guitar and announced that the evening's first offering would be The One I Love, a single released from the forthcoming Life in Slow Motion (RCA/ATO, 2005). David strummed exactly one chord before realizing that the guitar was not tuned to his liking, leading the Hawaiian-shirt clad Clune to joke from behind his drum kit that the song was a "short" number. Guitar tuned properly and the laughter in the audience subsided, Mr. Gray and the band then ran through a nice rock 'n roll tune in the vein of Bruce Springsteen's Brilliant Disguise. After stating, "we're here to play the new stuff," David took a seat behind the piano and ran through an additional solid-sounding track from Life that included a lyrical mention of the Catholic saint-turned-myth St. Christopher.

Please Forgive Me found itself in the third slot, the crowd clapping along during an extended ending that was punctuated by thunderous drum rolls from the always perfectly timed Clune. However, the remainder of the hour-long set would find only White Ladder’s Sail Away surfacing from Gray's past repertoire. While some of the new material was certainly welcome- the strongest and most noteworthy being Lately- the album as a whole, which sonically comes off as a slightly stripped down A New Day at Midnight, appears to be inconsistent at first blush. Although hearing an album’s debut played live does not allow a listener to get a proper feel for the offering, the forthcoming piano-oriented fare seemed to possess neither the bare-bones acoustic guitar brilliance found on Century, Lost Songs or parts of Flesh and Sell, Sell, Sell nor the catchy, electronically augmented creativity featured on Gray's previous two discs.

Gray and the band left the stage at 10:06 p.m., only to return a short time thereafter to treat the audience to a lengthy mini-set of five encores. Impatient whispers were heard in the crowd following the introduction of yet another new tune, Ain't No Love, for the first encore. The song itself sounded promising enough, but Gray's fans were clearly hoping (as well as calling) for a classic from the first half of his career. He then answered with Freedom, an unusual choice that was nevertheless enthusiastically greeted by an audience looking for something with which they were familiar. Gray risked the wrath of the infamous Philly boobirds by introducing a song "about a town nearby" named Baltimore, but also played a particularly inspired version of Silver Lining that featured singing in a voice even stronger than the normal commanding, compelling vocals to which David's devotees are accustomed. The show closed with the final track from the new album - the piano ballad Disappearing World - that was initially met with a collective grown from a small section of the balcony that was obviously expecting something else.

Gray and the band was a strong as a live unit and received loud ovations following each song, but the audience's enthusiasm for the show as a whole was clearly dampened by the dearth of material from previous well-received releases. Only a couple to the right side of the stage were seen standing for any significant portion of the show, with the remainder of the front row opting to remain in their seats for every performance following the opener. Compounding this was the fact that Gray's new studio album has not yet been heard by most fans, with the show essentially serving as a live test-run for the new material.

David Gray returns to North America in the Fall, playing slightly larger venues on an 18-date tour that opens in Toronto and continues through November toward a final stop in Atlanta. Although it would be unrealistic to expect Live at the Point Redux, here’s hoping that David, Clune and the band tap into the wealth of outstanding and well-loved material such as The Light, Flame Turns Blue, This Year's Love, Gathering Dust and Shine on their next visit to Philadelphia.