David Gray
Mutineers
Reviewed by: Lara Supan
Got a long car ride ahead? I’ve got the perfect solution.
Mutineers is an atmospheric, spacious album with simple yet profound lyrics and elegant instrumentation. Each melody is paired perfectly with it’s accompanying orchestration, doubling the melodic line in many of the songs and simply complimenting it in others. Octave harmonies create the vast panorama in songs like “Gulls” and “The Incredible”, while driving percussion builds a sense of momentum in almost every song on the album. With apt titles like “Snow in Vegas” and “Birds of the High Arctic”, you’ll be whisked away to far-away lands with sky that goes on for miles.
Beautiful and graceful melodies are the name of the game with Mutineers, but “Last Summer” presents itself as a tour de force. Gray adds a soaring violin to the mix in this one, allowing the song to build from simple rhythm guitar and synth pads with light piano to a breathtaking combination of orchestral composition that leaves you bereft when the song comes to it’s one note finish. That said, each song is a snowflake in the serene painting Gray creates with Mutineers. From “Back in the World”, a song speaking of jumping back into the flow of life, to “Gulls” which dreams about flying over it, Gray has created an experience worth having.
Sit back, roll the windows down and enjoy every minute of this album. You’ll breathe, smile, frown, and live in the confines of this tranquil journey, and you’ll be a better person for it. Powerful in it’s simplicity, Mutineers challenges the popular composition of the day with meaningful repetition, masterful orchestral build and a created space where the land “belongs to the gulls”. Warning: you probably won’t want to come back.
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