Artists with longtime fan bases and comfortable lifestyles rarely volunteer for complete makeovers, but British singer-songwriter David Gray has opted for an overhaul of his professional life for his seventh album.

For “Draw the Line,” Gray has a new band and fresh label deals. He paid for the recording of “Draw the Line” himself through Iht Records, the label and production company he co-owns with manager Rob Holden. The album has been licensed to the Mercer Street imprint in North America.

“This stems back to before [my 2005 studio set] ‘Life in Slow Motion,’ ” says Gray, who performs a sold-out concert Thursday at the Auditorium Theatre. “There were some huge deals on the table, around the world, to extend for a few records. We were staring at a check that would have sorted us out for the rest of our lives, but it just didn’t feel right.

”You could kid yourself when the money landed in your bank that you were still doing everything you’d ever wanted to do. But somehow the game would be over. We chose the risky route of funding this record ourselves to see what was going to be happening [in the industry] on the other side.“

Meanwhile, Gray reconnected with former guitarist Neill MacColl and replaced drummer Craig “Clune“ McClune with Keith Pryor. The result is a confident album, with Gray writing more observationally and less introspectively than of late. Standouts include the lead single, “Fugitive,” with its piano and guitar motifs, and stirring duets with Annie Lennox (“Full Steam Ahead”) and Jolie Holland (“Kathleen”).

It’s been 10 years since Gray’s fourth album, “White Ladder,“ slow-burned its way to multimillion sales worldwide, including 2.4 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Followups “A New Day at Midnight“ (2002) and “Life in Slow Motion“ have U.S. sales of 604,000 and 414,000, respectively.

Now Josh Deutsch, CEO of Mercer Street’s parent company, says he is eager to bring Gray back to “White Ladder”-style prominence by “reconnecting him to his fan base and introducing him to a new generation” of fans.

The new music might do it. “This album was phenomenally exciting to make,” Gray says. “I would die for every centimeter of it.”

Billboard