David Gray is bringing his world tour, Gold In A Brass Age Tour, to Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego on Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 7:30pm. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com.
David began writing Gold In A Brass Age in 2016 and it was recorded over several months between tours, including a 50 date US tour and a co-headline tour with Alison Krauss in 2017. Using a cut and paste approach to the arrangement of songs, the album’s atmospheric and experimental undertones are evident throughout. Gold In A Brass Age’s title is drawn from Raymond Carver’s short story Blackbird Pie, and informed by the regenerative cut of Gray’s adopted home of London and a fascination with the natural world, which has long since consumed his time outside of music. The album’s striking artwork - for which Gray sought out Peckham-based tattoo artist Londonboy Tattooer - depicts an Emperor moth with the City of London captured between its wingspan.
The album’s hypnotic lead single and album-opener, “The Sapling” bears out the nuanced approach in spades, with Gray’s rumination on the brevity of life tempered by layered vocals and a brass section including an English horn and baritone sax. “Time ticking by is a theme that recurs throughout the record,” says Gray. “Fragility, renewal, a changing of perspective.”
Speaking about the creation of Gold In A Brass Age, Gray says, “With this album, my default position was to do everything differently. I didn’t think ‘this would be a good hook’ or ‘these lyrics could work for a chorus’. I was keen to get away from narrative. Instead of writing melodies, I looked for phrases with a natural cadence, so that the rhythm began with the words. I reimagined where a song might spring from and what form it could take.”
Gold In A Brass Age will be David Gray’s eleventh album in a career that spans over 25 years, several Brit and Grammy nominations, and three No.1 UK albums, including the breakout multi-platinum White Ladder. It is also a vital new collection of songs from an artist still reveling in his passion for song-craft, pushing himself into unfamiliar terrain, surprising himself as much as his fans along the way.