David Gray: Making it acceptable for PDA whenever his music is played

The Wang Theatre in Boston is an impressive place, with its vast lobby and impossibly high orchestra sections (there are three people). It has staged plays, musicals, opera singers and probably a few world-famous drunken rock stars.

All of this makes the appearance of Lisa Hannigan all the more magical. We wrote about her this past February on the strength of her song “Lillie” and the accompanying video that came with it. For a while, her track live on my iPod as the random track on my Nite playlist and the one my friends would inevitably ask “Hey, who is this?”

To see her play live in such a massive venue and opening for David Gray brought with it a strange sense of satisfaction and pride, as if anyone who had heard of her prior to this moment was with her on stage, singing to a massive audience who were all thinking the same thing: “Hey, who is this?”

It was a nice precursor to David Gray, the Englishman who launched a thousand relationships with his songs of love, friendship and snow falling…slowly.

Almost immediately into his set, you could see the couples in the audience convene and embrace. I suspect most of them, like myself, have a personal memory attached to one of his songs.

Despite his punkish roots, Gray has emerged as the go-to guy whenever couples need something to wake up or fall asleep to together in bed on a rainy Sunday afternoon. These are songs that are simple and have a way of being realistic cinematic, in the sense that hearing them in a certain place and time can create a musical postcard people hold onto forever.

And though you may not understand how the two ugly people in front of you are caressing each other in public, you can appreciate it because, in this place and time, it truly is a beautiful thing to see love in its rarest and unbridled form.

For me, Gray will always remind me of the night my future wife and I connected, not as former lovers-turned friends-back to lovers again. This was two incredibly horny people who took out their frustrations on each other on a rainy Friday night with Gray playing in the background.