From manchester With Love

David Gray says he sees every album he makes as a new beginning.

“You can’t be resting on your laurels, on anything you’ve done before,” Gray said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a completely clean slate each time.”

That may be true, but after his 2005 CD, “Life In Slow Motion,” Gray gave the slate a much more thorough cleaning than he had heading into any of his previous albums. He jettisoned his long-time backing band and put together a new group of musicians.

“I don’t make hasty changes, but things accrue over time, and you take note and you feel the hunger is a little bit lacking in people, and yet, you need to follow things through,” Gray said. “I knew I needed to change stuff because it had gone a bit stale and formulaic really.”

The shakeup had its desired effect, and perhaps may have exceeded Gray’s expectations.

“It gave me a huge boost,” he said. “I’ve never had a more fertile writing period. I think the words just came back to me. There was a new sound, and a toughness and a simplicity to what people were playing, and I found a voice that I had been looking for for a long time.”

Gray had such a burst of songwriting that he not only re-emerged in 2009 with the CD, “Draw The Line,” but also a second CD, “Foundling,” with songs from the same period, was released last August.

A native of Manchester, England, Gray came to fame with his fourth CD, “White Ladder.” Spurred on by the single “Babylon,” it topped one million copies sold in the United States alone.

Gray continued to ride the wave of success, releasing two more studio CDs, “A New Day at Midnight” in 2002, “Life In Slow Motion,” as well as a greatest hits album in 2007 – reaching career sales of more than 12 million albums along the way.

Then he realized he wasn’t feeling so successful artistically and decided to find a new groove with a new band.

As Gray began working with his new band (which includes drummer Keith Prior, bassist Rob Malone, guitarist Neil MacColl and keyboardist James Hallawell), the songs started flowing.

The band’s influence was fully felt on “Draw The Line,” which had a bigger, bolder and more organic sound than Gray’s recent albums. But those weren’t the only type of songs he was writing.

Gray is now doing a full band tour, but is featuring acoustic instrumentation, which should suit the new material nicely. And while he has no great expectations for “Foundling” on a commercial level, he thinks the music he put on the CD is built to last.

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere. It’s not one for ‘the man,’ you know,” Gray said. “I don’t see it as a chart maker for very long, but I think this will just stand up and it’s an important thing for me.”