We have a special video premiere and Song of the Day for you from Thea Gilmore with Coming Back To You from her 15th album ‘Ghosts & Graffiti’, an album which is part new, part retrospective. A 20 track double album with some remarkable guests, some of whom appear in the video below as she celebrates what has past and keeps a steady gaze on the future.
https://youtu.be/E7Y_uqrs3Yg
It pays to offer some retrospective vision when your music career stretches over 17 years and it’s also inspiring to hear Thea talking so frankly about her past when asked about talking about this new release. “I didn’t set out to make so many albums. There was no master plan, I just had things to say so I found a way to say them. Now I see every record as a snapshot of that particular time in my life. I go back and listen to myself singing when I was 18 and it’s like a haunting; the songs are the ghosts of my past”.
Whilst not wanting to say too much here, as we will be covering this album in a lot more depth very soon, it is worth saying that whilst some of the album is celebrating those earlier snapshots in time she mentioned some of the new material is deeply political. In this regard she has clearly given careful consideration to chosing her guests – from her friend and hero Billy Bragg to Joan Baez, an original voice of the counterculture and an active civil-rights campaigner. Also appearing is the original punk-poet John Cooper Clarke, another strong voice of social conscience.
Further collaborations include I Am Kloot, King Creosote, The Waterboys, Neil Gaiman, the iconic fantasy novelist, who contributes the sleeve notes and New York’s Joan As Police Woman.
‘Ghosts & Graffiti’ is as much an artistic achievement as it is a career celebration. Weaving the past with the present, this is an album that reveals Thea Gilmore in all her guises. Whilst perhaps not a household name, Gilmore has crept up on us all as a quiet icon.
She is the conscience of the music industry, that little voice in your head that proves that beyond hyperbole, beyond the glitterati, Twitterati and the Facebook flash-in-the-pans, there is music that matters and the people that it matters to. That is where true, lasting careers are born and that is exactly where Thea Gilmore shines.
This is an album that’s befitting for newcomers and long-time fans…whichever you are, a remarkable album awaits you.
Ghosts & Graffiti is Released 18th May 2015 via Full Fill.
Pre-Order it via Amazon
Tour Dates
May 09 Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham,
May 10 Glee Club, Nottingham,
May 12 Pocklington Arts Centre, Pocklington,
May 13 Komedia Brighton,
May 15 Sage Gateshead, Gateshead,
May 16 Bingley Arts Centre, Bingley,
May 20 Cheltenham Town Hall, Cheltenham,
May 22 The Pleasance, Edinburgh,
May 23 RNCM Manchester, Manchester,
May 25 The Stables, Milton Keynes,
May 26 The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds,
May 27 Cadogan Hall, London,
http://www.theagilmore.net
Notable Tweets
Here's the lovely guys at @FRUK giving my vid a premiere. http://t.co/nDglSIe7Jx
— Thea Gilmore (@theagilmore) April 28, 2015