David Gray brings unreleased mid-2000s music to light in March

David Gray's Nightjar is a companion album to his 2005 release Life in Slow Motion, out March 27 via Bella Figura Music. Featuring 19 previously unheard songs written and recorded during the same period, Nightjar draws from 2003–2005 sessions that ultimately produced Life in Slow Motion. The song “When I Fall In Love” is out now.

Reflecting on the period, Gray describes it as one of upheaval and creative reset following the unprecedented success of White Ladder. "We were almost three years on the road touring White Ladder,” he recalls. “My father had passed away in the midst of that campaign, and then, shortly after I got home from all of that, my wife gave birth to our first child in somewhat traumatic circumstances. I was also now a successful, famous and wealthy man with the world apparently at his feet. It was a lot to make sense of. Personally, privately, professionally, emotionally, creatively. Way too much to chew in one bite.”

Much of the music was recorded at The Church Studios in Crouch End. “The flavour of some of these songs is one of grief, and in others of confusion and disillusionment,” Gray reflects. “I think I was attempting to make sense of everything that had spun me round so completely in the previous four or five years. That would prove to be a long process, perhaps a never-ending one in some respects.”

That rawness is part of why Gray feels the record matters now. “I think there is a rawness to the emotional tone as well as to the high tempo recording process, and that’s one of the reasons I think it’s important to put this music out,” he says. “Life in Slow Motion was the ambitious and highly produced end result of this 18-month recording blitz, but these other songs reveal much more of the story and shine a light on many of the dark and conflicted feelings that were beginning to crystalize.”

The announcement follows last November's 20th-anniversary reissue of Life in Slow Motion, released as its first-ever vinyl edition.

Track listing:

When I Fall in Love

Money
The Easy Way Out
Nightjar
Green Light
Mr. Bennett
Long Gone Now (Alt Version)
Everybody’s Leaving Town (Drum Delay Mix)
Alive
Poor John
Wave
Sacred Ground (Alt Version)
The Golden Ray
Far From Here
A Model Life / My Angel Now
Madder Rain
Laughing Gas (2004 Version)
Side Effects (May Also Include)
The Final Order