As a compromise, Frith and drummer Chris Cutler released the songs on the album Hopes and Fears as Art Bears, while the instrumental tracks became Western Culture.

[18] "The Boy Beats the Rams" opens Gravity with a burst of laughter followed by some tap dancing, "random" percussion and Frith's "distinctive keening" violin.

"[19] "Dancing in the Street" is a "de/reconstruction" of Martha and the Vandellas's 1964 hit that includes a "bizarrely harmonised guitar" playing the song's melody over a "boiling mass of feedback" and tape manipulation.

[13] "Crack in the Concrete" features an e-bowed guitar over "edgy, dissonant chords" and a "massed kazoo choir of horns" that presages Frith's experimental rock band Massacre he formed in New York City in February 1980.

[17] "Norrgården Nyvla" flows into "Year of the Monkey" which ends with a brief sample of the 13th Puerto Rico Summertime Band, "ten seconds of the real thing" according to the LP liner notes.

[13] In a 1980 review in Sounds magazine, John Gill described Gravity as an album of "wonderfully stateless music", a blend of jazz, rock'n'roll, chamber, European ethnic, and New York City soul and Hispanic.

[21] Writing in a 1981 review in Audio magazine, Diliberto said the album's mood and tempo changes constantly: "a quaint bar mitzvah [becomes] a Middle Eastern waltz"; a climax of "fuzzed" guitars switches to a "light-hearted horse and buggy romp".

[22] Diliberto stated that with Henry Cow and Art Bears, Frith's guitar work was "barely traditional", but on his solo albums, it was "totally anarchic", and Gravity was no exception.

[22] Bill Milkowski wrote in the January 1983 edition of DownBeat magazine that in contrast to Art Bears's "bleak attitude", Frith's Gravity is a "truly joyous solo LP ... an extremely warm, almost whimsical album".

[6] Thomas Schulte at AllMusic described Gravity as an "entertaining and multicultural pocket folk festival" and said it was "one of the most important guitar-based, experimental guitar titles from the avant-guitarist".

[23] In a BBC Online review of Gravity, Peter Marsh called it "absolutely essential", adding that it "manages to be wildly eclectic yet avoids incoherence".

[12] Nicole V. Gagné wrote in her 1990 book, Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music that Frith's laughter at the beginning of Gravity permeates the rest of the album.

[24] Gagné described Frith's cover of "Dancing in the Street" as "a loving stab at American pop", adding that what makes it "uniquely wild" is the way the blend of rock music and tape noise "taps into the charm and exuberance of the song".

[25] Gagné called the climax in "The Hands of the Juggler" "one of the high moments of the entire album" that "goes beyond any cultural allusion; it's a celebration of a spirit, a release into the Folk.

The performers were Frith, Dominique Leone, Jon Leidecker (Wobbly), Aaron Novik, Ava Mendoza, Jordan Glenn, Kasey Knudsen, Lisa Mezzacappa and Marië Abe.

[29] Frith led two more performances of Gravity at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York City on 19 and 20 September 2013, featuring Frith (guitar/electric bass), Leone (keyboards), Leidecker (sampling), Novik (clarinet/bass clarinet), Mendoza (guitar), Abe (accordion), Glenn (drums), Knudsen (alto saxophone), Mezzacappa (bass), Kaethe Hostetter (violin), and William Winant (percussion).