GRACIE GRAY
BIO
Gracie Gray is an LA based singer, songwriter, and performer. She began her solo project while studying classical voice, touring, and working as a studio singer and songwriter. Gray’s songs have been described as spectral spells, putting the listener into a heartfelt and dreamlike trance. Their commanding yet delicate vocal has captivated live audiences as displayed in various performances including Sofar Sounds.
“Oregon in a Day”, Gray’s debut LP, received critical acclaim from publications including LA Weekly, IMPOSE, and High Clouds, garnering comparisons to ‘90s mainstays Mazzy Star and Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker.
Gray was raised in Los Angeles as the middle child of four siblings. She was homeschooled before college and began touring with a band while attending the Bob Cole Conservatory for a classical voice degree in 2016. Her solo project emerged with her bandmates’ encouragement. She left school before graduating and recorded her first EP “Black Clothes” at Revolver Recordings in Thousand Oaks with producers Jacob Williams and Mikal Blue. Gray was beginning to set the pace for her visceral and honest songwriting with tracks like “Space” and “G I Wish U”
After touring her EP, Gray began to record her follow up album “Oregon in a Day.” It abandons clean- sounding studio gear for the raw intention and emotion of a bedroom-recorded album. Having produced and mixed most of it herself, each decision is reflective of her priorities: the songwriting and execution. Wanting to convey silence after loss, the opening track has notably sparse instrumentation leading to refrain “everyone’s gone away.” The following track, “Dreams Overwhelm Me” speaks of how the heart takes time to detach from past relationships and how that resurfaces in our dreams. The pocket groove “Holding Up A Candle” uses lo-fi guitar and layered vocals to convey the exhausting lull of repressed anger, tied together with the ending lyric “sometimes I feel angry, I fall asleep but I can’t scream.” The sixth track “Morphine” takes a step back from personal experience and offers perspective. It is an ode to the person we all know that is passionately in the dark or light, always chasing some kind of dream with the line “you take it way too far, so no one’s love will ever reach you.” As Gray’s first full length album, Oregon in a Day is a bold “hello” to the world as an artist and producer.
Knowing how to record in her bedroom proved helpful in 2020, as it allowed her to continue her project during quarantine and complete a new collection of songs. As her first release in almost two years, “alienlover” follows the theme of separation in her last record while shifting to a heavier sound, and a more experimental, elaborate approach to production.