David Gray

When David Gray emerged at the height of the grunge era, folk-tinged troubadours weren’t exactly in vogue, but the fire in his voice and the raw emotion in his songs were impossible to ignore. With a touch of Van Morrison and a dash of Dylan, the British songsmith could get more from clanging his acoustic guitar for all it was worth and hollering his heart out on a track like “Shine” than most artists could from a big, blustery band. On his big breakthrough, White Ladder, Gray gave his ballads a bold new feel by blending them with pulsing electronics on techno-folk triumphs like “Babylon.” But by the time of Draw the Line, he’d come full circle — you can hear his roots being rediscovered right before your ears on the warm glow of the anthemic but organic-sounding “Fugitive.”

Love and lust loom large in David Gray’s worldview in Next Steps.

Like most great songwriters, David Gray dares to aim his pen directly at the human heart — his songs examine the highs and lows of love from every angle. Poignant piano ballad “Falling Free” captures that lump-in-the-throat moment when true love opens a door to the discovery of a whole new world. Bottles are emptied and clothes are shed as “Debauchery” takes a more, shall we say, full-contact approach to the art of love. And Gray pulls a passionate, acoustic rumination on romance in ruins from an unexpected source when he turns Soft Cell’s ’80s synth-pop gem “Say Hello Wave Goodbye” into a folk-flavored tearjerker.

Hear David Gray living large and rocking out in Deep Cuts.

Through the last two decades, David Gray has earned a reputation as one of Britain’s best balladeers, but he knows how to rev up and let loose too. “Faster, Sooner, Now” finds Gray rocking things up to give his saber-toothed attack on materialism plenty of momentum. Even on an acoustic-based track like “Let the Truth Sting,” Gray opens his mouth wide enough to let the four-alarm fire roaring inside him come lashing out with as much force as the fiercest punk-rock rant. But sometimes he amps up the intensity by belting out a big ol’ power ballad, and on “Full Steam” he gets some high-profile help from the powerful pipes of Annie Lennox.

David Gray manages to embody the musical values of old-school singer-songwriterdom while bringing something distinctly modern to the troubadour tradition at the same time. Sometimes he does it by fusing folkie acoustic elements with more modern technology, and on other tunes he simply digs deep enough into his own turbulent emotional core to guarantee a hot-blooded immediacy to everything he sings. From intercontinental hits like “Babylon” and “Please Forgive Me” to heart-tugging duets with Jolie Holland (“Kathleen”) and Annie Lennox (“Full Steam”), we’ve corralled all the crucial cuts from the David Gray discography for you right here. So all you’ve got to do is step in and start soaking it all up.