... Rules For Jokers is her third album, from 2001, and rates as possibly the finest female album I've heard for ages.
THE TRACKS
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GIven that Ms GIlmore is certainly a wordy and literate songwriter, I've included my ususal track descriptions and marks out of five, along ... Read review
Rules for Jokersis the third CD from Thea Gilmore, a British singer/songwriter who is ... more
equally at home with delicate acoustic ballads and stinging, electric guitar-driven songs. Gilmore's lyrics are full of dense, poetic imagery and she delivers them wi...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Rules for Jokersis the third CD from Thea Gilmore, a British singer/songwriter who is ... more
equally at home with delicate acoustic ballads and stinging, electric guitar-driven songs. Gilmore's lyrics are full of dense, poetic imagery and she delivers them with an urgency that wouldn't be out of place in a punk band. Even when she sings a melodically gentle song such as "Holding Your Hand" or "Take Me Home" with its suggestively swaying rhythm, her fierceness is never far from the surface. And when she lets loose and cranks up the volume on "Fever Beats" and "This Girl Is Taking Bets" the words flow from her with a bitter wit that recalls Elvis Costello in his younger, angrier days. Thea Gilmore wrote and recorded these songs when she was only 21 years old. If she sounds this good now, how much better will she be when she's had a chance to see more of the world?--Michael Simmons
Postage & Packaging:£1.21 Availability:Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
...pop since around 1997. Rules For Jokers is her third album, from 2001, and rates as possibly the finest female album I've heard for ages.
THE TRACKS
--------------------
GIven that Ms GIlmore is certainly a wordy and literate songwriter, I've included my ususal track descriptions and marks out of five, along with a best line section. Enjoy.
**1. Apparition No.12 (2:43)**
A super start to the album ... ...The Lipstick Conspiracies (1999)
Rules For Jokers (2001)
Songs From The Gutter (2003)
Avalanche (2003)
Loft Music (2004)
MP3s and samples: theagilmore.com
LIKE THIS? TRY THESE (or vice versa)
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If you think you may like this but aren't sure, I would liken Thea Gilmore's style to the following artists and albums:
more
Right, that's enough book-reviewing, CD-R burning, monitor-bashing and lyric-analysing. It's back to the gramophone for me.....
WHO'S THIS THEN? ----------------------------- It's Thea Gilmore, a 26 year old singer and songwriter from Oxfordshire. She's been peddling her particularly beguiling brand of thoughtful acoustic pop since around 1997. Rules For Jokers is her third album, from 2001, and rates as possibly the finest female album I've heard for ages.
THE TRACKS -------------------- GIven that Ms GIlmore is certainly a wordy and literate songwriter, I've included my ususal track descriptions and marks out of five, along with a best line section. Enjoy.
**1. Apparition No.12 (2:43)** A super start to the album with Thea strumming along unaccompanied in an uptempo manner. Some great lyrics are heard throughout this short track and the acoustic guitar is by turns clever and a pleasure to listen to. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "I held the future up to a looking glass/ it bears a striking resemblance to the embers of the past"
**2. Holding Your Hand (3:44)** Another acoustic track which really doesn't set the theme for this varied album. "I'm gonna haunt you" Thea sings throughout, and by her soft but insistent voice, you know that this could be a scary thought. I'm not the biggest fan of slow songs, but there's a diference between schmaltz and beauty. And this has got the latter in spades. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "On every knife edge, every trip on every needle tip, I'll be holding your hand"
**3. This GIrl Is Taking Bets (3:31)** This girl can also rock, but not in the heavy guitar sense. More in the traditional bluesy way of things. It's a storming, thumping track that's fast in pace but sensible in execution. Her sweet voice rises for the chorus and all the verses feature some cracking couplets. The best part of the song is when the music dies away leaving just a hi hat and slide guitar to accompany Thea through the 3rd verse. Best track so far. Mark: 5/5 Best line: "This girl is the resurrection, she's the comeback/She's the absynthe and whiskey and poetry and Prozac"
**4. Saviours And All (3:41)** A mid tempo drum and lazy Bob Dylan harmonica start this track off before the verse builds up to the ridiculously catchy chorus of "oh here it comes, here it comes freefalling". Guitars gently jangle in the background and the harmonica occasionally revisits the track. The nearest to a pop song this album produces. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "There's a pact/Between the ozone and the tarmac"
**5. St. Luke's Summer (3:44)** The intro see THea dispensing of percussion as she did on the earlier tracks. Her voice is semi-vocodered, addin a distant, cold feel to her usual warm delivery. This track could almost be a sea shanty and is certainly nautical in flavour with references to sailors and the high seas, but overall this is the poorest track so far. That's not to say it's not good, far from it, it's just had a hell of a quartet of predecessors to follow! Mark: 3/5 Best line: "She got Tiffany earrings from a limejuice sailor/Rich man, poor man, tinker, retailer"
**6. The Things We Never Said (4:51)** Again just an acoustic married to Thea's beautiful voice and well observed lyrics. I find this song a bit too long for my taste. Although I can't argue with her talent, I would have preferred one of the faster tracks to be longer than they are. Mark: 3/5 Best line: "Im talkin to the radio because it doesn't answer back"
**7. Seen It All Before (4:13)** A mid tempo bluesy effort, this is a great song. Thea's whispered delivery is best when singing against a percussive background. The guitars jangle again and at the bridges of the choruses they chug in a rocky manner. Thea builds up emotion throughout the song until it's virtually wobbling with passion by the end. As Andy Mack would say: great stuff. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "This side of Birmngham's a great place to be when they finally light the match"
**8. Benzedrine (3:01)** A fast intro with a banging guitar and deep cello, similar to some of the WOnderstuff's music from about 12 years ago, then "do it right/right/do it right" sung in a style bizarrely close to Wham's I'm Your Man! Her catchy choruses always feature the simplest lyrics. In this case it's "oh my darling, oh my darling, benzedrine". The best track so far? Yup. Mark: 5/5 Best line: "They've got their clothes and their diet conscience but are they art?"
**9. Movie Kisses (3:23)** Raw, looped acoustic guitar starts this tracks off as Thea sounds quite "folky" as she comes in for the first verse. The song is stop-start, musically, with Gilmore's lyrics remaining sharp throughout. Mark: 3/5 Best line: "Let's pull the curtains back and give this love a heart attack"
**10. Take Me Home (3:13)** Not the classic Phil Collins track from No Jacket Required, but a folky, janglethon that thrives on simple chords and notes and prefectly sung lyrics about "sweet Mary" and "holding my own Halloween". There are far better tracks on the album but this still isn't terrible. Mark: 3/5
**11. Keep Up (2:42)** This song has the strange position of featuring Sarah Jane Morris on backing vocals. Many people won't know her by name, but 80's kids (like me) will know her as the woman who helped the Communards out on their huge 1986 hit Don't Leave Me This Way. Sad to say, you can hardly hear her on this stop/start track. Another song revelling in simplistic beauty. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "You'll be six feet under before you catch up with the Joneses"
**12. Saying Nothing (3:20)** This song has got a country-ish twang all the way through. It's "lonesone" lyrics and miserable outlook are testimony of its debt to that genre, but non-country fans need not look away because it's a very strong song full of great playing and crystal-clear singing. Mark: 4/5 Best line: "It's just you and me now/Your alibis have gone bed".
**13. Inverigo (4:16)** The final part of the acoustic trilogy that sees the album out to its close, this is a track of fine melodic substance. Gilmore's voice is quieter and wispier than on previous tracks and this song - about the role of humankind in the world today - is a fine, understated and introspective way to end this fine, understated and introspective album! Mark: 3/5 Best line: "There's a lunchtime radio show and the shit that they play"
THEA GILMORE DISCOGRAPHY ---------------------------------------------- Burning Dorothy (1998) The Lipstick Conspiracies (1999) Rules For Jokers (2001) Songs From The Gutter (2003) Avalanche (2003) Loft Music (2004)
MP3s and samples: theagilmore.com
LIKE THIS? TRY THESE (or vice versa) -------------------------------------------------------- If you think you may like this but aren't sure, I would liken Thea Gilmore's style to the following artists and albums:
Artist: Tanita Tikaram Album: Ancient Heart Year: 1988 Why: Similar, husky, folky voice and metaphorical lyrics
Artist: Joni Mitchell Album: Blue Year: 1976 Why: For the myriad acoustic moments that Thea does so well
Artist: Alanis Morrisette Title: Jagged Little Pill Year: 1995 Why: Like Alanis, she only swears when she needs to
Artist: Norah Jones Album: Come Away With Me Year: 2002 Why: For the quieter moments
Artist: Kate Rusby Album: Sleepless Year: 2000 Why: Thea's sound is a watered down version of Kate's staunch folk
OVERALL --------------- I can't rate this highly enough. It's Gilmore's talent and the criminal underexposure she receives that has me despairing of the current music industry. This year, she released her sixth album, Loft Music. It's arrival hardly prompted a mass fanfare of trumpets, more like a single note on a kazoo!
This album is affecting, upbeat, maudlin, clever, unpredictable (but never flash in a boring muso way), acoustic, rocking but always full of melody, whimsy and invention. It's a curious British hybrid of pop, folk and rock. Yet, above all else, it's the clever lyricism and grass roots production that win through.
I am that confident in this singer's ability and so incensed by her constant anonymity in the music industry, that if it wasn't illegal, I'd say: "leave me your postal address in my PGB and I'll burn you a copy!". But I can't, know what I mean?
Advantages: Unparalled lyrics, clever arrangements and lots of little barbed comments throughout Disadvantages: Not a household name, so hardly anyone has heard of her
, and everything I've heard her perform backs up the description in my first paragraph.
Brought up on a mixture of Dylan, The Beatles and Elvis Costello, TheaGilmore started writing poetry at the age of 15 as a release from her reaction to the breakup of her parents' marriage. At 19 she released her first album, "Burning Dorothy" to critical acclaim but no commercial success, a pattern that continued with 2000's "The Lipstick Conspiracies", 2001's "Rules For Jokers" and 2002's "Songs From The Gutter" (originally an Internet-only release) - each successive project receiving plenty of plaudits but little else. "Avalanche" netted her something of a breakthrough in that "Top of the Pops" featured the video for the single "Mainstream", both this and "Juliet (Keep This In Mind)" getting some reasonable radio airplay at the time. The producer on "Avalanche ...
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