David Gray at Union Chapel

Embarking on the first of a limited series of sold-out live performances of 2021’s haunting Skellig, David Gray and his choir warmed the frozen eaves of the appropriately not-deconsecrated Union Chapel. Gray was accompanied, as he enchanted the audience, by the record’s original collaborators – Caroline Dale, David Kitt (who shared a solo set to open), Rob Malone, Niamh Farrell, Mossy Nolan and Ben de Vries.

These six vocalists sang as one, seeming to give voice to one spirit in their harmonies, dialling back to sparser sounds on piano and strings to allow the poems that meander through these songs to reach the audience unencumbered. Helpfully, while deeply evocative, this music names its evocation, as the album title refers to the remote Skellig islands, a former and future sanctuary just off the coast of County Kerry – and, much like the indefinable Atlantic that shapes these islands, Gray and his choir brought movement and stillness together at once through the undulating chorus of Gulls, the tense repetitions of Accumulates and the heartbreaking sweetness of Heart and Soul. Pausing here and there to introduce a track, thank his band and declare his performance an “act of love – straight from the heart”, Gray sang his creations as if for the first time, as close to overwhelmed by the magic that lets these songs come into being and be shared with the world as a professional could allow himself to become.

Save for a one-man, one-piano performance of All That We Asked For – a gentle moment of intimacy and appreciation with the audience, who were still cooling down from their contribution to the chorus of Spiral Arms – Gray held tightly to his fellow musicians, and it perfectly suits the defining compassion of Skellig to be rendered in this way. Off the back of the 20^th anniversary of classic White Ladder, Gray would have every right to lean into a personal celebration of his own career – instead, the talent of his colleagues is placed (literally) centre stage, as just one way of showing patience and gratitude to the artists who inspire and expand his own creative capacities.

Sylvia Unerman
Photos: Nick Bennett

For further information and future events visit David Gray’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Accumulates here: