Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
English singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore, at just 23, is the genuine heiress to the Bob Dylan-Leonard Cohen-Tom Waits legacy of dark, brilliant indie folk-rock.
Sep 29, 2003 | Thea Gilmore matters. Thea Gilmore is the real thing. Not just because this 23-year-old woman-child is a brilliant acerbic songwriter. Nor because she sings her verse with a voice you could imagine Emma Peel possessing if that black-leather secret agent could indeed sing. No. Thea Gilmore is important because her quirky five-CD oeuvre (her best and perhaps finest album, "Avalanche," released in mid-September) documents a prolific precocity we haven't witnessed since Elvis was a kid (I mean the British Elvis, of course).
Thea is also British, born in 1979. She began recording her own songs in 1995, when she was just 16. This teenager was no Britney, singing about puppy love and navel rings. Instead, she wrote lyrics like some delinquent Sylvia Plath: "I am like a bitch in heat"; "You fucked your way in, you can fuck your way out"; "You tattooed my image on the lips of all your friends/ As some tight cunt to fuck and leave and fuck again ..." Yet her sound wasn't punk. Gilmore's first records were produced with that guitar/keyboard ethereal Brian Eno-begat-Daniel Lanois-begat-Malcolm Burn high-tech whoosh sound (think Emmylou Harris' last few albums), the kid's lyrics sound elegantly dangerous, not juvenile -- the difference between a spotty girl with a Mohawk lugging an axe vs. a Hitchcock cool blonde in a evening gown hiding a razor between her legs.
By the time Gilmore hit 20, what had been juvenile and bombastic in her music matured into serious beauty. Terrible beauty. Her last three records -- recorded over a period of 18 months -- are just a notch below masterpieces. The three discs are "Rules for Jokers" (2002), the double CD "Songs From the Gutter" (2002; only available on the Internet) and the just-released "Avalanche." As we speak, she is recording a record of covers. She has just finished recording Neil Young's "The Old Laughing Lady" as she takes my phone call.
"On your new song 'Juliet,'" I say, "you sing, 'There's something so beautifully chic/ About burning out so young.' Can you tell me your life story before music?"
"I was born in Oxfordshire of hippie parents of Irish origin," she says. "It was a leafy upbringing. My mates were a few sheep and some cows that lived up the green. Horses were a massive part of my life. My mother does falconry by horseback. My father was a chiropractor who preferred treating horses to humans. I grew up on Bob Dylan records and ska. It was expected that I would be an accomplished rider, but I was excited by words at a young age. I shunned the equestrian life. I started writing songs and met my producer at 16. When you hit that age in England they make you go out and spend two weeks somewhere in what's called Work Experience. There was a recording studio near my house [Fairport Convention's Woodworm Studios]. I loved listening to music so I thought, 'Let's go hear how it is made.' I met this guy who walked in and we struck up a quiet, profound relationship about music."
That "guy," Nigel Stonier -- the girl's senior by at least a decade -- was a knockabout on the U.K. folk scene, writing songs for Fairport Convention and gigging with Lindisfarne. "I got to know Thea gradually through hanging out after sessions," he e-mails me. "She had this quiet intensity about her, and striking intelligence. I guess you kinda knew she was someone who'd be successful in whatever field she chose. She sent me a tape of five songs some time later. The first song was called 'Hydrogen,' and I'm not prone to dramatic pronouncement, but I can honestly say that 50 seconds in I knew I was hearing someone exceptional."
He produced Gilmore's first EP. Another elder named Sara Austin heard it and became her agent. Both have remained with their girl since. What a juicy story if these three had some kind of pseudo-Lolita ménage à trois going on! I only suggest it because it would fit the sexual dynamics of Gilmore's lyrics. What we know positively is that Nigel and Sara were junkies for Thea's talent. "I met Thea at the end of '96, when she was just turning 16," Austin tells me via e-mail. "The gig was a bit ropey but even then Thea had an awesome presence, and the songs were amazing."
Gilmore's "amazing" songs were hard for British critics to pin down from the jump. Since she was definitely not a neo-punk, she must be a "folk singer."
"Some people write me off as some waily folky woman," Thea says. "Other people think I'm rock. In terms of an image, if you want to be cold and corporate about it, it's hard to decide who my target market is. There isn't one. There is no box that I can be put in."
If Gilmore can get pissed at men in her songs, she gets even more enraged at the pop music industry. "There's a lunchtime radio show/ there's the shit that they play" goes one. "Tell me when did you get so safe?" goes another. "Oh those veiled love songs that you play/ Have you really got nothing better to say?" The centerpiece on "Avalanche" is "Mainstream," which is either a pastiche or an homage to Dylan's immortal line, "Johnny's in the basement mixin' up the medicine," only Thea attacks "angels in the abattoir junking up a good guitar," asking "Who's gonna train us, can you really blame us?/ If we grow up we're all going to be famous."
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