Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If necessity is the mother of invention, then inevitability must be the gentle kiss of love that she places upon your forehead and to which a few will wipe off in embarrassment, but which some will feel the reinforcement of their ideas and allow the comfort to inspire them on, to greater heights, to conquering the nagging fear that their belief had been gnawed away.
An anniversary of any kind in the world of art is worth celebrating, but it should also be one of remembrance, a tribute to where you were when you might have been at your lowest ebb creatively or spiritually, existing in a different plane where defeat was being urged by the haters and the well meaning alike, and to whom they both sincerely offered you an escape route of conformity and slave like freedom.
To continue on, to climb the White Ladder and see beyond the horizon others had in mind for you, is not only a great act of self-belief, it is the rebellion and the revolution to which the artist emerges fully determined to beat the devils of doubt at their own game. It is a game to which David Gray emerged, initially bloodied, but certainly unbowed, and to which the nation took to their hearts in amongst the Brit-Pop addicted and the Grunge-fuelled as a sign of acoustic and alluring guiltless guitar to which they could embrace.
The 20th Anniversary of White Ladder is a memory to once more behold of just what David Gray brought back to the charts at the time, but how he also resonated to the change that was coming, that kiss of inevitability which wanted to remove itself from the loud and abundant and instead revel in the grace of meaningful heartache and sincere warmth that the album suitably provided.
The memory remains as songs such as Babylon reintroduces itself with a salute to the times it helped inspire, as tracks such as Nightblindness, We’re Not Right, the beautiful This Year’s Love and the telling cover of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye place their musical faces over the parapet once more and are gratefully received as nothing had come between the lister and the song except Time.
A 20th Anniversary that might not have come around had David Gray not continued to believe, a belief that in all honesty we should install to all who seek to have their voice heard in the fight against the deafening silence of conformity.
Ian D. Hall