Thea Gilmore / Flo Perlin / Clare Sands – Home, Manchester; October 14th, 2022

Somewhere in 2019 I stumbled across Thea Gilmore in a tweet by Neil Gaiman – her album Small World Turning had either  just been released or was about to be. I checked out her music and fell in love, ordered her album and many of the others since, joined her Patreon and put her on my list of people to see live. After a failed attempt last year, I finally made it and now I want to go again. It was a brilliant show, full of good music and good humor. Since it was part of a folk festival, we got two other artists as well and I loved them too. What a great night.

Sitting on a plane from Reyljavík to Manchester in the morning, running on one hour of sleep, i wasn’t so sure if this had been a good idea, but I didn’t want to miss this concert so here I was. After a nap on the flight, I felt much better already and once at my hotel in Manchester, I took another one. Refreshed, I headed towards the venue, grabbed some food on the way and got there in time for the doors to open. It was an early show, starting at 7:15.

I had a great seat in the 6th row of the theater and not much time to wonder who else might be playing that night, because it started soon after we sat down. First up was Clare Sands, an Irish artist, who used her tome to take us on a musical trip around Ireland. I loved avereything about her set, from the way she plucked the violin in the beginning to her voice to the red dress whe was wearing with a traditional irish woven belt. She even did a twirl to show it to us. 😀

Her songs were beautiful tributes to her country and showing us history of specific regions from Donegal to Conamara to Cork. She sand in Irsish and English, instructing us to sing along and teaching us some words on the way (and I thought Icelandic was hard ;)) It was lovely all around and she even moved me to tears a time or two. What a great start!

I was conviced, Thea Gilmore was next, but we got another band instead, with a cello, a guitarist and one additional singer. They told us their names, but never introduced the band, so I only learned after the show that this was Flo Perlin. Their songs were gentle and beautiful and I especially love dthe cello. You can’t go wrong with me with cello and harmony singing. I had a flashback to “tuning is hard” from the Graz gig last week, when the singer had trouble getting the guitar in tune and the second singer joked about missing her train. 😉

Like Calare Sands before them, they told us that they could not see anyone in the audience, so it was nice hearing us. Their set was great, with their clear voices ringing out beautifully and the instruments underlining their songs. 🙂 Before the last one, the second singer hadto run to make her train and we got one more wit the cello and one voce. So far I was loving this.

Fnally, the stage was set up for Thea Gilmore and my smile grew wider. this was, what I had been waiting for. I thought she would start at 9 and was really surprised when she stepped on stage 10 miutes before that. Considering most of her songs are on the sad/dramatic/depressive side, it was a really funny evening. I laughed a whole lot throughout.

She greeted us, asked how we were doing and started out with the powerful ‘Of all the violence I have known’, a spoken word song from her latest album ‘Afterlight’, making great use of a loop station. From there, it was right into ‘Friendly little Heart attack’, which is from the same album, but closer to the material I first fell in love with. I loved both and knew then and there it had been the right decision to come.

Early on she told us that she was not a folkie and folkies would recognize that immediately because “they know what they are doing”. She introduced her loop station as Jim and said that the previous day his name had been arsehole, because he refused to work the way she wanted him to. 😀 When we laughed about it, she said it was nice to hear that we had not gone home yet, because she could not see a thing.

Thea decided to make the obvious pun about the place feeling like home and chatted while tuning her guitar. It didn’t work out right away, so told us about supporting Midge Ure, wo did not like that she was taller, “to be fair, I’m about a foot and a half taller than most people”. 😉 Finally the guitar was tuned and she gave us an amazing version of ‘Stain’ – I really wanted to clap along, but didn’t, because nobody else did. I could not stop moving in my seat though.

“I’m gonna play a happy song”, she told us, after she moved over to the piano, a love song even. It was brand new and called ‘Chance’ and will be on her upcoming EP. She joked that she hoped we’d remember it by January, unless we hated it. I sure didn’t, it was beautiful. 🙂 Thea thought we might know the next one and invited us to sig along, but nobody did. It was Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’. I didn’t know the song, but enjoyed it very much.

Her song selection was great, from brans new ones to early releases with a few covers thrown in. I was entranced by her enegy as much as her voice. She radiated, it was clear that she enjoyed performng. Within moments she drew me in and even though I didn’t recognize all of the songs and couldn’t sing along to any, I was totally caught up in the music.

Thea was back at the loop station and told us she though the next song was cursed when she found a part unplugged, wondering if Jim was going to do OK. She asked us to pretend it never happened in case it went terribly wrong. “I assumed you didn’t come tonight to be cheered up?” she joked and played us “a song I wrote about Columbine”, ‘Jonny gets a gun’. I kept tapping the rhythm with my hands on my legs. She told us that ‘This Girl is taking Bets’ was the first song she ever got played on the radio and how it felt like a win at age 21 to “bring the tone of BBC radio 2 down”. I don’t think I#d heard this one before. It was brilliant.

She announced the next song was about friendship and how you find out who your friends are when bad stuff goes down. “Especially over the last two years we all needed our friends, right?” – one person replied yet, so she joked “one of you anyway§ and dedicated the song to that one person. It was the beautiful ‘Rise’. <3  Next we heard that one of the cover songs she played was featured on “Army of the Dead” without her knowing. Nobody in the audience seemed to be Zombie fans though, at least nobody affirmed when she asked and a few said “no!”. It was CCR’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and this time a few people sang along. “It’s sort of your duty, this is a folk festival after all.” 😉

It was the point of the night to introduce the band so she asked us to give a warm hand for “Phil down here”. I thought he was called Jim? Either way, someone joked it wasn’t Phil Harmonic and everyone laughed. The played ‘Bones’, a song she has just released. Afterwards she told us about the Afterlight album and the “brilliant career decision” to change her name and that she is stuck with her own name after all. The next song was the happiest song on the album, called ‘Vespering’, which means “flying towards the sunset and she thought of as a great metaphor for getting older”. She also gave a shoutout to her friend,  whose Twitter feed Haggard Hawks inspired her to write the song.

We then got only one more song, because “they have a super-tight curfew here”. She let us know there was merch and she’s be there, signing “pretty much anything… no cheques”. The final song was ‘Last’, bringing us back to ‘Afterlight’. Once outside, I bought Cds of all the performers and talked to Thea a bit, thanking her for the show. I am sure this was not the last time I have seen her. 🙂

Setlist

Of all the Violence I have known
Friendly little Heart attack
Stain
The Chance
Wrecking Ball (Miley Cyrus cover)
Johnny gets a Gun
This Girl is taking bets
Rise
Bad Moon Rising (CCR cover)
Bones
Vespering
Last