‘Lost’: Stripped-Down Songs From David Gray

David Gray was lost all those years. A stalled career. Doubts that he should continue making music at all. Then came the unexpected divorce of his parents. The struggles between disbelief and faith have only fueled his music, leading to deeply felt lullabies of sorrow and redemption.

The long battle against indifference finally ended with “White Ladder,” recorded in 1998 but released last year. It became an international hit that melded haunted acoustic balladry with samplers and drum machines. The music on “Lost Songs” shares the same desperate emotions that have earned Gray comparisons to Van Morrison and early Elton John, but this time Gray has stripped things down to barely more than acoustic guitar and piano.

The result is equally moving. The songs were written in the years before “White Ladder,” but recorded after, originally for release only in Ireland. And the album’s opening track, “Flame Turns Blue,” easily stands among his best, as Gray passionately sings of lives passionately lived.

The Englishman’s voice is a soothing, wounded rasp, quietly emotional but never melodramatic. Twice he doesn’t sing at all, on the delicate, cascading instrumental “January Rain,” and again on “Wurlitzer,” which closes the 37-minute recording with drifting organ passages. By then Gray has documented the darker corners of the soul, where feeling can be as comforting as it is overwhelming.

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