DAVID GRAY 2025 ‘PAST & PRESENT’ WORLD TOUR INCLUDES TWENTY-SEVEN UK & IRELAND DATES ACROSS
MARCH, APRIL, MAY & AUGUST 2025

Acclaimed new album DEAR LIFE out now VIA LAUGH A MINUTE RECORDS / SECRETLY DISTRIBUTION
LISTEN HERE: https://laughaminute.lnk.to/DearLife

David Gray has embarked on his fifty-two date Past & Present world tour in support of his critically acclaimed new album, DEAR LIFE, released earlier this year via his independent label, Laugh A Minute Records/Secretly Distribution.

Gray will embark upon a run of UK dates throughout March, April, and May. The majority of shows are already sold out, including London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall, the first of two shows at the London Palladium, Glasgow’s SEC Armadillo, Manchester’s 02 Apollo and Dublin’s 3Arena. All UK and European dates will feature special guest Talia Rae, Gray’s collaborator on the lead single, ‘Plus & Minus’.

The response to DEAR LIFE has been extraordinary. Critics have hailed the album as “a brooding triumph” (Telegraph), “his most confessional and emotive work to date” (Clash Magazine), and “a slow-burner that catches fire” (Mojo). The album has also drawn comparisons to Gray’s multi-platinum-selling, WHITE LADDER - “the sonic DNA of White Ladder is present here,” (Rolling Stone) and “his most successful album since WHITE LADDER” (Music OMH). Gray’s artistry as a songwriter has also been singled out - “this 13th album confirms Gray’s not lost his touch” (Guardian) and “a soulful collection of richly poetic songs about love, change and mortality” (Independent).

David Gray’s story is unlike any other. He spent almost a decade striving to make a breakthrough, and when it happened it did so in the biggest way imaginable as WHITE LADDER became one of the best-selling British albums of recent decades and established him as an arena-filling artist. As the years have passed, his songcraft has only been deepened by his natural ability to convey specific emotions, atmospheres, or, as heard on his acclaimed 2021 album SKELLIG, a perception of place - all positioning him in the lineage of classic poetic singer-songwriters rather than lovestruck acoustic troubadours. While the likes of Ed Sheeran, Adele and Hozier have acknowledged his influence, David has continued to follow his own artistic path.

DEAR LIFE is Gray’s thirteenth album. It’s the result of “a starburst of songwriting … it just seemed like the gods of songwriting were being kind. The doubting voices didn’t turn up.” An album of emotional crisis and resolution, mortality and faith, reality and illusion, love and heartbreak, magic, science, loss and acceptance. While it is full of yearning and hope, there is an undercurrent of darkness, a tension between competing forces of hope and despair: a cavalcade of emotions in what is his most lyrically-focused collection to-date.

‘Plus & Minus’ catches the songwriter at his most immediately infectious. The song’s piano refrain frames a duet about a fractured relationship, in which Gray’s distinctive voice trades words of disillusionment and despair with newcomer Talia Rae, whose smoky vocal simultaneously evokes equal measures of wit and sadness.