Product Description

David Gray's '93 debut marked him as a unique and importantvoice in folk-rock. His emphatic acoustic guitar strum and his Van Morrison-via-Steve Forbert vocal burr are the sonic focus here, but it's Gray's passionate, poetic songs that really take centre stage. Imagine the protagonist of Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN picking up guitar and pen, and you'll be on the right track.
Gray's emotive delivery and heartfelt lyricism are full of youthful angst and passion. On "Birds Without Wings" and "Gathering Dust" he recognises the faults of the world around him as well as his personal failings, but on the transcendent, definitive "Shine", he expresses an unquenchable desire to rise above petty cares and find spiritual contentment. It's the battle for thatcontentment that's so expressively documented on A CENTURY ENDS.

Track Listing

1. Shine
2. A Century Ends
3. Debauchery
4. Let The Truth Sting
5. Gathering Dust
6. Wisdom
7. Lead Me Upstairs
8. Living Room
9. Birds Without Wings
10. It's All Over

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40031 in Music
• Released on: 2001-07-02
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Hardly anybody--with the notable exception of Irish songstress Mary Black, who subsequently turned out a rather splendid cover version of "Shine" some years later--bought A Century Ends, David Gray's debut album. Emerging in 1993, at a time when an uncharacteristically contented British public was bending its knees and twanging its braces along to the larksome antics of Britpop, there was little space on the living-room shelf for the torturous boudoir ponderings of a young-but-gnarly Dylan soundalike. There are pretty moments, but this is a record where angst and lust reign supreme--"Debauchery" is a salty tale of having it away on a rug with an alcoholically-lubricated lady ferry boat operative (sung in a voice pitched somewhere between the Waterboy's Mike Scott and celebrated naval fish-finger salesperson Captain Birdseye) while "Lead Me Upstairs" is a courtship tale which dispenses with first-date niceties. Britain later changed its mind about David Gray--after all, more people in the UK own his 1998 album White Ladder than own a ladder--but A Century Ends is a surprising rediscovery, a record begging further investigation for anybody whose idea of a good night in involves the solitary rolling of Rizlas along to Astral Weeks or Blood on the Tracks. --Kevin Maidment

Customer Reviews

Undisappointing debut
Don't compare this to anything he's done since because it just work that way. This is David Gary debut, a raw, folky compilation that combines passion and anger as much as it provokes the same in its' listening audience.
White Ladder seems a million miles away from this album, and that's good thing. I like them both, but for different reasons. If given the choice, this would be the only Dave Gray album I'd take with me if my house was on fire.
Fantastic.

Good, but not that good
This album in my opinion is David Gray's worst album - that's not to say it's bad, but not as good as subsequent albums. It's worth buying it though, just for "Debauchery" which is a classic and one of my favourite songs ever by anyone, and "Birds Without Wings" which I think is also a classic track with great sentiments. I think the rest of the album is average by David Grays standards - although you must bear in mind that his standards are very high.

David Gray at his ultimate best
This is an album which defines the word album. From the first chord in shine, to the dae out on it's all over, you realise you have been in a place were very few albums take you. This album will hit you emotionally, those been shine, lead me upstairs but also you have the happier one's like wisdom and a century ends. this album will make you apprciate music at its finest, and also it should give you respect for a man who deserves so much more. There is not one song on this album which is terrible, and every song is fantastic. if you have not heard this album then you need this, its almost like medication. a century ends is an album quite frankly of the century