Ahead of her forthcoming self-titled album due for release on 6th October, Thea Gilmore has released a gritty and commanding new single today – Nice Normal Woman. The track is accompanied by the inspired stop-motion video created by Thea herself.
Thea has said of Nice Normal Woman, “The song was inspired by a quote from Bette Davis in All About Eve (‘write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband’) and I wanted to make the video as real and crunchy as possible to reflect the idea in the track that the glorious, sometimes dark, often hilarious everyday gets missed so often in our eternal drive for the insta-perfection. So I sat on the end of my bed and took almost 800 still images of me in various states of genuine dishevelment and cut them all together to make the video.”
Creating 800 still images is quite an effort, but Thea Gilmore is used to going the extra mile…in 2021, she released Afterlight, an album that dissected her personal life and drew a line in the ground that shouted “things are going to be different from here on in”. That shift towards new ground also marked Gilmore out as an artist not prepared to stand still…Art can be powerful, and ‘Nice Normal Woman’ is precisely that – she’s leaping forward, making music on her terms on a self-titled album that was entirely written, played and produced by her.
That’s why this is my first self-titled album,” she explains. “On my last album, I changed my name to Afterlight and drew a line under everything I’d done up to that point. Not to invalidate it, but to put an end to the ‘before’. It was a very inward-looking record that was rooted in the darkness of everything that happened to me up to 2019, whereas this album has its head up and is eyeing the world as a challenge. It’s a logical forward motion – the emergence from the shadows of Afterlight into the relative lightness of Thea Gilmore – in a renewal of my vows to music, my first love. In a weird way it feels like a debut of sorts, so it made sense to make it eponymous.”
Thea is also excited to bring the album to the stage after getting a taste for it as main support for Frank Turner at Towersey Festival last weekend. She will play London’s Union Chapel on 12th October and then an 11-date tour around the UK in early 2024. The full dates are below. Tickets can be purchased here.
UK Tour Dates
12th October 2023 – Union Chapel, London
31st January 2024 — St. George’s, Bristol
1st February 2024 — SJE Arts, Oxford
2nd February 2024 — Huntingdon Hall, Worcester
3rd February 2024 — Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham
4th February 2024 — The Haymarket, Basingstoke
5th February 2024 — The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds
6th February 2024 — The Glee Club, Birmingham
7th February 2024 — Stoller Hall, Manchester
8th February 2024 — The Stables, Milton Keynes
9th February 2024 — Howard Assembly Room, Leeds
10th February 2024 — Sage 2, Gateshead