20 albums and 25 years into her recording career and only now does Thea Gilmore feel enough of herself to make the self-titled album that renews her vows to music – her first love. The album is being released on Friday 6 October and is available to pre-order now.
The album was entirely written, played and produced by Thea. Thea Gilmore is absolutely the record she wanted to make. In many ways the record she had to make. Sustained by the very public dissection of her personal life laid bare on her last full-length release, the stunningly intimate Afterlight, Thea’s hard-earned reputation as one of the most distinctive, strident and bold singer songwriters of her generation propels her to reach for new ground and this new release feels like a great leap forward into tomorrow.
“That’s why this is my first self-titled album,” she explains. “On my last album I changed by 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.”
Thea Gilmore has made 20 albums since the release of her first, Burning Dorothy, in 1998. The veteran of hundreds of festivals, she has sold out shows across the globe. Her music features in Olivia Coleman’s film Joyride (2022), as well as Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead (2021), Blithe Spirit (2020) starring Judi Dench, and the BAFTA award winning Bait (2019). Thea has also worked with and won the admiration of cultural icons such as Bruce Springsteen, Martha Wainwright, John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle and Beth Orton.
