Save The Year deserved, in some ways, to be 2005's White Ladder. After all, look at the similarities - both downbeat, melancholy records summing up the drudgery of normal life with no money, job or girlfriend. The biggest difference between the two records is a few million album sales. But for the many who view David Gray as little more than a modern extension of Phil Collins, don't be put off. The music here is in a vain far more easily associated with Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths and other indie grumps.

The whole album is a beautiful portrait of what life really can be like down in the doldrums - "Another Night Wasting" tracks pointless nights down the pub with nothing better to do and low-key opener "Waking Me Up Again" is one of several songs about strung-out relationships. Not exactly musical prozac then but Darren Moon's voice lifts everything far above the ordinary. Able to be gruff and downbeat and crysalline beautiful from one moment to the next (in particular see closing track "You Stopped Letting Me Hold You In The Night", where the key line 'I'm sorry but I don't know what to say/the only words that spring to mind are those of Marvin Gaye/what's going on?' is delivered with such heart-ache and pathos as to make Chris Martin blush.

While it is possible to accuse Save The Year of lacking scope or variation - and true none of the songs stand out as being enormously different to the next - it is full of subtle variations - "Still Holding My Stomach In" is a woozy keyboard wash and "Bugsy's Lament" and "To Know A Ceiling Well" are possessed of ebullient music out of kilter (in a good way) with the content.

Save The Year may never sell many copies, but for those that do pick up a copy there's a perfect accompaniment to every low point of the life - a gentle reminder not to give in, and that things will always be better some day.