David Gray has returned, doing what he does best, and those who appreciate intricate, profound, and evocative music should celebrate. Dear Life is perhaps his most profound and captivating album yet, full of emotional struggles and healing, life and death, truth and fiction, love and heartache, wonder, reason, loss, and acceptance. It marks Gray’s 13th album, the product of “a burst of creative genius…a true blessing from the gods of songwriting.” While it brims with yearning and optimism, there is an underlying sense of darkness, a balancing act between hope and despair: a rollercoaster of emotions in what is his most lyrically-driven record yet.