David Gray - Nightjar [2LP]

Twenty years on from Life in Slow Motion, David Gray opens the drawer marked unfinished business with Nightjar, a double LP of songs from those sessions that never saw daylight until now.

Life in Slow Motion arrived in 2005 as Gray's second album after White Ladder turned him into a household name, and he wrote far more than one record could hold. Nightjar gathers nineteen of those previously unreleased recordings as a companion to the album's twentieth anniversary, setting songs in his classic, heart-on-sleeve style beside stranger, more experimental pieces that hint at roads not taken.

The running order reads like a peek inside the studio notebook. "Nightjar" and "Green Light" sit among the more familiar-sounding material, while the archive openly shows its working elsewhere: "Long Gone Now (Alt Version)" and "Sacred Ground (Alt Version)" offer different takes, "Everybody's Leaving Town (Drum Delay Mix)" lets the rhythm smear and echo, and "Laughing Gas (2004 Version)" catches an idea in an early, unvarnished form.

It plays like a private sketchbook made public, full of ache, warmth and that unmistakable cracked voice. For anyone who has worn out White Ladder or Life in Slow Motion, this is a rare chance to hear what was happening just off the page, spread across four sides that reward patient, late-night listening.