David Gray at the North Shore Events Centre

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

In an odd sort of way David Gray is a victim of his own success. The songs from his breakthrough album White Ladder and last year's follow-up A New Day at Midnight don't seem built for the big rooms. Indeed Ladder , which sold in the millions internationally after Gray's previous efforts had him languishing in obscurity, was recorded in a bedroom-cum-studio.

But if the folk-rocker's songs sound up close and personal on record, then a little something got lost in the translation to the live arena - or in this case the North Shore Events Centre where a sit-down sell-out crowd of mostly thirty- and fortysomethings greeted Gray and band on the last date of his Australia-New Zealand tour.

They had a good time singing those Ladder hits back to him.

And it was hard not to come away highly impressed by the power of Gray's keening singing voice, especially on ballads like See You On the Other Side which was an early, rousing highlight.

However, as a concert experience Gray was only so exciting. He himself was an affable but not overly engaging frontman possessed of a remarkably wobbly head.

That wasn't helped by a drummer who took strange pleasure in breaking the fundamental rule of being a percussive sideman (they should be heard not seen) engaging in his own distracting patter with the crowd and whose Hawaiian shirt collection managed higher decibels than his playing - which, with the rest of Gray's backers, was solid and sympathetic stuff.

Interestingly, the electronica element which gave Gray's recordings a contemporary edge was kept to the fore throughout, all the way to near the end of the night with the nightclub-strength version of Please Forgive Me.

Gray dusted off a couple of tracks from his unloved early albums, unfortunately showing just why his career spent those years in relative anonymity

Other highlights along the way included his cover of Soft Cell's Say Hello Wave Goodbye, the heart-on-sleeve Be Mine and the nautically themed hit Sail Away, inevitably kept for the encores.

It was a buy-the-album-see-the-show kind of night.

And it was also a reminder that Gray has some lovely songs (in his case the sadder, the better), a worryingly wobbly head but a solid body of work.