[.ca] Shine Best Of The Early Years

From Amazon.com:
This is not the first collection of David Gray's "pre-success" recordings, but it is the best one. Unlike many such collections of early works by noted artists, you're not seeing the artist's abilities in their infant state--each of these 15 songs is already great. The Mancunian musician's performing abilities were well developed by the time he first recorded in the early '90s; one might even argue that they sound best in the often stripped-down, more raw state on display here. The songs themselves, however, have definitely matured since Gray hit the alt-adult-contemporary big time with the electronica-tinged White Ladder in 2000; such songs as "Wisdom" and "Birds Without Wings" do show the marks of other singer-songers (notably Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan). These days, of course, David Gray is himself often used as an adjective, to describe all the other scruffy-bearded blue-eyed songsters reaching for the sensitive crooner's crown. --Mike McGonigal

• Shine
• Late Night Radio
• Coming Down
• Birds Without Wings
• The Light
• Everytime
• A Century Ends
• Lullaby
• Faster, Sooner, Now
• Wisdom
• Falling Free
• Sell, Sell, Sell
• Debauchery
• Flesh
• Hold On To Nothing