David Gray, Royal Albert Hall - music review

When an established artist is touring a new record, they have a decision to make: play the new stuff and risk alienating the audience or stick with the old stuff and risk never moving on.

If you go for the first option, as David Gray did at the Royal Albert Hall last night, the new material had better be good. As it is, Mutineers, the singer’s first new record in four years, is a mixed bag. So for every As The Crow Flies, a harmony-filled hymnal of spellbinding beauty, there was a Gulls, another song to add to the 46-year-old’s mounting post-White Ladder pile of maudlin piano ballads.

Having severed company with Craig “Clune” McClune — the drummer who brought so much visual excitement to Gray’s live shows — the singer is now touring with a slightly more static seven-piece backing band. But they were put through their paces on Mutineers, an eight-minute excursion into driving rock.

Elsewhere, recent single Back In The World proved that Gray hasn’t lost his knack for writing lifting, lyrical folk-pop. “I’m taking down from the shelf, all the parts of myself, that I packed away,” he crooned over its bouncy piano chords, head gyrating as manically as ever.

A little like allowing your kids to have their dessert only after they’ve eaten their greens, Gray ended the show with a clutch of old favourites. The One I Love was greeted like a returning war hero, while Babylon and This Year’s Love turned the Royal Albert Hall into a 5,000-strong choir.

Gray may be looking to the future but, without stronger material, his audience will remain more interested in his past.