MUSIC REVIEWS: David Gray’s Draw The Line

By R. A. Pearson

David Gray released a new CD, Draw The Line, in the fall of 2009, to the acclaim of his fans and music critics alike. Many see this release as a follow up to his 1999 breakthrough CD White Ladder. Draw The Line has a studio CD with 11 songs; songs which give the listener an ‘on the lam’ type of feeling. The first two tracks, “Fugitive” and the title cut “Draw the Line,” help set the mood for the entire collection of songs on the CD and have received some air play along with “Nemesis.” Gray also does duets with Jolie Holland and Annie Lennox, formerly of the Eurythmics. The duet with Lennox is the final song on the album, “Full Steam” and provides a great climax to the CD.

Gray’s band for the Draw The Line includes Gray on keyboards, Keith Prior on drums, Robbie Malone on bass, Neill Maccoll on guitar, and many other musicians and guests brought in for the project. The CD was produced by David Gray, Robbie Malone, and Iestyn Polson.

The second CD contains live recordings of eight songs recorded at the Roundhouse in London in September 2009. The live CD included great cuts of David Gray classics “Sail Away,” “Babylon,” “Other Side” and “Nightblindness.”

Draw The Line is a great CD. It should attract a wide range of listeners rather than the regular David Gray fans.

24- year-old artist Colbie Caillat’s new CD, Breakthrough, also released in 2009, contains her hit single “Falling For You” along with 16 other songs. The CD is a follow up to the extremely popular CD Coco, which contained the songs “Bubbly” “Little Things”, and “Realize.” She won a Grammy Award in 2008 for a duet with Jason Marz on “Lucky.” Colbie is helped in her music and her career by her father, Ken Caillat, an established audio engineer who helped produce Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Tusk albums during the late 1970s.

Breakthrough is basically a pop CD with most of the songs co-written or written by Colbie Caillat herself. There are some good songs and good music on the CD, and with time the artist’s writing of both lyrics and music will mature as many artists eventually do. The CD features world renowned guitarist David Becker on two tracks, “Rainbow” and “Runnin’ Around” giving those songs added spice. Other interesting songs on the CD include “Begin Again,” “Fearless,” “Breaking At The Cracks,” and “Break Through.”

Carly Simon, who looks as though she has not aged a day since she released Anticipation in 1971, has released a collection of her tunes she has remade with largely acoustic arrangements entitled Never Been Gone. On this CD look for piano, acoustic guitars, other string instruments, and percussion instrumentation other than heavy drums to set the mood for the music and vocals.

Several of the songs Simon revisits on this 12 cut CD include songs that have formed the backbone of her long and influential career including: “Coming Around Again,” “Let The River Run,” “It Happens Every Day”, the title cut “Never Been Gone,” and “The Right Thing To Do.” The CD includes great renditions of “Anticipation,” “That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be,” and two songs from one of my favorite Carly Simon albums, Boys in the Trees, “You Belong To Me,” and the title cut “Boys In The Trees.” On the new CD “Boys In the Trees” has a somewhat Calypso/Samba, semi-Latin style that, along with the artist’s signature voice, really sets the song aglow. The CD has two new songs “No Freedom” and “Songbird.”

Of course, the collection would not be complete without Simon’s signature song “You’re So Vain.” This version offers a few new twists to the classic; however, all the characters, accusations, and betrayals of the early version are alive and well in this 2010 “You’re So Vain.”

Meanwhile the guessing game continues as to who the man in “You’re So Vain” really is. The latest guess by the British newspaper the Sun was David Geffen the head of Elektra Records at the time the song was first recorded in 1971. According to the Sun, after playing the new version of the song backwards Simon is clearly saying “David” during the song. The information was picked up by blogers and hit the blogosphere immediately. Simon denied the reports saying she did not know David Geffen at the time she wrote the song. Past suspects for the inspiration for the song have included Carly’s ex-boyfriends Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, Cat Stevens, and Kris Kristofferson.

Never Been Gone, is a unique set of remakes. For those readers who want to remember the songs the way they were leave Never Been Gone alone, but if you enjoy a different interpretation of classic tunes, give it a listen.

In other music news the Australian pop band Men At Work lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit over their famous hit “Down Under” in early February when an Australian judge ruled the song was largely lifted from an old Girl Guide song called “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree’ written more than 75 years ago by a country school teacher. The judge ruled the famous flute riff was unmistakably the same as the children’s tune, written in 1934. This could mean a big payday for publishing firm Larrikin Music, who took EMI (a British record company Electric & Musical Industries) and “Down Under” to court.

Pink Floyd also began a lawsuit against EMI attempting to stop the sell of individual tracks form their albums such as Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the best selling albums of all times. The band contends the selling of individual tracks, such as MP3 Downloads was “expressly prohibited” under the group’s contract signed over 40 years ago. Pink Floyd’s back catalogue has only been outsold by the catalogue of the Beatles.