It would seem the time is ripe for the first new material from David Gray in three years. Presently you can't move for singer songwriters and their cumbersome acoustic guitars. The likes of James Blunt and Damien Rice have taken the blueprint from White Ladder and polished it into something beyond bland.

Another set of autobiographical angst would have seen Gray laughing all the way to the bank. Heaven knows what his constituency of Q readers and Radio 2 listeners will make of this. A love song but hardly conventional. It's sung from the perspective of someone bleeding to death. It's more Wilfred Owen war poetry than a polite Daniel Powter ballad. The music is full of little twists, and is close to the latter day Springstein of The Rising and Devils & Dust. A churning riff is backed by vulnerable string washes, a sparkling music box refrain and that yearning, soulful voice of his.

If this is representative of the new LP Life In Slow Motion then I can hardly wait. This sounds fresh, wired and full of possibilities.