DAVID Gray's White Ladder was the stuff of pop music myth, a lo-fi, self-financed album that became a huge success. Here was serious-minded pop for grown-ups, sensitive, yearning music that had a voice of its own, yet could still pass for coffee-table rock, just so for the dinner party or CD player in the Ford Mondeo.

For this follow-up, Gray could have carbon-copied White Ladder or he could have produced something radically different, just so that no one could snipe that he'd done it all again, only with money in his pocket.

Instead, the singer-songwriter produces an album that resonates with White Ladder, while sounding different, driven by piano rather than guitar, and the gaps filled out by looping echoes.

Gray has a poetic soul and the album's title hints at what he is about: the "new day" suggests optimism, new life and moving on; while "midnight" sums up his own darkness, especially at the loss of his father, who died just as Gray became successful.

The darkest moment comes with the stand-out song Freedom, in which the opening sound of a brass quintet gives way to a six-minute examination of loss, the sort of heartfelt subject Gray tackles so well.

Yet not all is gloom. Caroline is an uplifting hymn to love, driven by the cheery pedal steel of BJ Cole. Be Mine is another surge of optimism, showing that Gray, with his honey-gravel voice, can do happy as well as sad. It's just that he does do sadness so very well.

This album is a few stops short of perfect. The tone is unvarying and some of the songs sound too alike, musical twins holding hands. Yet David Gray has shown that he can climb up that White Ladder and reach somewhere else.

Updated: 11:04 Thursday, November 07, 2002