0Shares
A great album doesn’t have to make a grand political statement or adhere to some lofty concept. Sometimes a great album is nothing more than a collection of well-written and beautifully produced songs.
Few musicians know this better than David Gray. In a career spanning over three decades, the journeyman U.K. singer-songwriter has quietly crafted one understated masterwork after another (the most recent,
Skellig, arrived in February). Gray’s magnum opus and most beloved work, however, remains 1998’s
White Ladder.
Though the record Gray’s fourth failed to chart in Britain at first, things changed when a young upstart named Dave Matthews released it stateside on his ATO label two years later. Gray rocketed to global superstardom overnight, and
0Shares
When most people think of novelty music, they think of “Weird Al” Yankovic; I’m mainly lookin’ at you, fellow elder-Gen Z types. I, too, was a member of the cohort of middle schoolers that learned the lyrics to “White and Nerdy” before Chamillionare’s “Ridin’.” But where most kids were satisfied with listening to Mr. Yankovic’s greatest hits, I required more of myself. What followed after first discovering Weird Al was a deep dive into the world of comedy music. Intoxicated by her thorough knowledge of the comedy stylings of the likes of Victor Borge and Tom Lehrer, thirteen-year-old me carried herself with all the elitism of an r/LetsTalkMusic moderator (and none of the street cred). A few years later, I came across the Sub Pop-signed comedy duo Flight of the Conchords and their eponymous 2008 album;