Music > Album Reviews

David Gray - Skellig

02/03/21

This is David Gray’s twelfth studio album and it was recorded, mixed and produced at Edwyn Collins small intimate studio at Helmsdale on the Sutherland coast. The title track Skellig opens the proceedings and it’s the best song on the album. It is stunning and intense, a quite beautiful offering with its multi layered vocal choir of seven different singers including Gray himself. It is a very intimate moment for the listener and perfectly sets the tone for what is to follow.

Skellig Michael is an epic formation of precipitous steep and inhospitable rocky islands off of the coast of County Kerry, the most Westerly point in Ireland where in the 6th century Irish Christian monks for circa 600 years lived in caves on its dangerous jagged rocky edges. Its fascinating history and many tales were the inspiration for the album.

Dun Laoghaire continues in the same vein as the opener, it is a real emotional outpouring that stirs the soul, those seven voices are once again at it and sounding just amazing as a collective. 

Accumulates, Deep Water Swim, The White Owl and the brilliant most recent single Heart And Soul, more obviously lean towards the singer / songwriter that we all know so very well. 

Laughing Gas and Can’t Hurt More Than This finds Gray pouring it out at the piano. 

Spiral Arms see’s the multi layered vocals return, it’s a very passionate and uplifting song, one assumes about someone wrapping their arms around you and never letting you go as he sings ‘were so close it hurts’ and ‘so it’s skin on skin, let the games begin’. 

It’s a very deep and spiritual album where the devil is in the detail. An album to fully immerse yourself in and when youre fully stuck inside its soul, observe its quality through a good set of headphones. It has a real depth and quality and some great atmospherics to it that really help to stir the soul. 

On this form, there is still plenty on offer from David Gray. He really is in fine fettle, Skellig is a real triumph.

9/10

Skellig was released on the 19th of February.