First off, how is this album 10 years old already?

This week I’m listening to David Gray’s White Ladder album. This is probably my most favorite album of all time. I cannot express how much I love this album. There isn’t a weak track here, and Gray hits all the right emotional buttons to carry you through to the end. Most people know “Babylon” and “Please Forgive Me”, which not only got some radio play, but seemed to pop up in every popular show at the time. To me, the real standout is Gray’s cover of Soft Cell’s “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” (Gray’s version is sans comma and almost twice as long). The lyrics were always sharp, but the way Gray pulls off

Take your hands off me, please
I don’t belong to you, you see.

Take a look in my face, for the last time.
I never knew you, you never knew me.
Say hello, goodbye.

with the anger and sadness of a heartbroken man is both chilling and beautiful, and the way the song bleeds into Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” at the end is such a brilliant touch. Soft Cell may have created the song, but Gray sang it the way it was always meant to be played.

In a lot of ways, the cover reminds me of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing”. As my friend Carl once said, “The original is what Hendrix meant, Vaughan’s cover is what Jimi felt.”

Gray has made some great albums before and since White Ladder, but unfortunately, this was my first Gray album, and because of it, everything else feels pale by comparison. It’s a lot like how Jitterbug Perfume was my first Tom Robbins novel, and no matter how hard he tries, every book of his feels second best.

Every song on White Ladder brings me some amazing memories (a lot of this had to do with the fact that I nearly went 3 years playing it non-stop), and in 2007, “Sail Away” was the song my wife and I first danced to at our wedding.

I have quite a few stories I need to get done this week, and this’ll be the album that’ll bring me to my deadline.