Thea Gilmore – Union Chapel, London; December 5th 2024

Once again I had traveled to London to see Thea Gilmore at Union Chapel and once again it was a brilliant concert. I had left Árstíðir’s ongoing Christmas tour to see this and it was the right choice. What a great night.

I had arrived in London the previous day and got there just fine, despite ongoing construction between Cologne and Aachen. Saw an intense play the first night and spent the afternoon before the concert seeing Hadestown once more. It was raining heavily when I left and hurried to Union Chapel. The rain stopped when I arrived and there were only three people already in line. So my planning was right. A guy arrived just after I did and we spent a lot of time chatting. It made things a bit mire bearable when the rain came back full force.

The venue staff was lovely and did the bag checks in advance so they could let us all in quickly at 7. Thea had a few rows reserved for Patrons and thus I easily got a seat at the front even though about 20 people had been on he guest list and gotten in first. I felt cold, but the venue didn’t offer any tea so I just had to wait to get warm again – it happend eventually.

At 20:00 Philippe Nash started playing for us. At first it was just him with a guitar and I thought it was alright, but his music didn’t particularly speak to me. Then, he was joined on stage by a cellist, which immediately made it better. He spoke about this being a big deal, because he had seen other people perform at Union Chapel. He pointed out how great the staff at the venue was. For the last song, we got a violin player too. He had been taking pictures so far. It was all nice and very listenable music, but I didn’t really feel drawn to it.

Exactly at 21;00 Thea was on stage, starting with ‘This Girl is Taking Bets / Nice Normal Woman’, just she and her loop station. It sounded fantastic, until she got to the part where she switches songs and the drum effect didn’t sound like it was supposed to. She fiddled with the loop station and quickly the sound guy came to help and changed a plug (i.e. replugged it). Then it worked and Thea had something to joke about- 2at least you know it’s live, eh!”. What a fun start.

“It’s always joyful when shit happens on the very first number,” Thea quipped and continued that she was glad she had brought backup. With that she called the band on stage and told us we would get a mix of old and new today. “Let’s make a little not of noise shall we?” led to ‘When did you get so safe’. It rocked, with a great beat and guitar.

She asked us how we were and said Union Chapel was one of her favorite places to play at. “Were you here last time?” Quite a few of us were. She mentioned the next song was off the new album, which apparently many people hated so she felt she’d done something right if she was hated by the critics. “It’s great!” someone yelled. I agree. ‘Unravel me’ was amazing. 🙂 Thea told us about the BBC’s “21st Century Folk” project and meeting Delyth Raffell, who shared the story of her daughter, which lead to the following ‘She speaks in Colours’ and then played it for us. Such a beautiful song.

Did we feel like singing? Most agreed and she joked about the people in the back going “Nah, that’s why we sat here’. We heard about her upcoming album of covers, which, because she is so good a marketing, does not include the next song. We heard how she got a message about Spotify asking for a thank you video to her Spotify fans and she was like “Can I tell them to buy the vinyl to?”. Back to the song – she felt it has been done to death and she does not really like it, but she felt connected to how miserable the words were. 😀 It was ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ of course and the sing-along worked really well. I rather like her version of the song.

We went back to 2003 For ‘Razor Valentine’ and learned that she had done a version of it with John Bramwell of I am Kloot and sings it with a slight Manc accent ever since. Brilliant. We stuck with the ‘Avalanche’ album and the title song. I loved hearing that song. It is such a good album.

Thea spoke about playing in Nottingham the previous night and introducing the next song with the story of its recording at great studio and a guitarist from New Zealand called Chris Sheenan and when she was at the merch after the show, the engineer from that studio showed up. He had not aged either, “clearly he has a portrait of himself in the attic”. She mentioned how Chris Sheenan had nailed the guitar solo live at the studio, then looked at her current guitarist, saying “This is Jim Kirkpatrick – no pressure”. All this was the introduction to ‘My own private Riot’ and it was fantastic. Guitar solo – excellent!

She introduced the band – Charlie Rachael Kay on bass and Olli Tamlin (?), “who isn’t feeling well today”, on drums. She thanked Philippe Nash for supporting and asked us to please busy his merch. “I’m gonna take you to 2017. I wrote it in 2016, thinking this is as bas as it’s gonna get, but, you know, got some good songs out of it.” She explained it was a song about friendship. It was the beautiful ‘Rise”. She played a perfect version. :’)

Thea told us that when she was 20 she thought playing an entire set with the back to the audience was cool (as her then guitarist did), but now she just thinks its rude. 😀 Next up was ‘Bones’ from her current album, which she introduced as “basically a female rage song” and dedicated it to Gregg Wallace (guy from master chef that has just been accused of sexual assault). Anyway, the song was awesome. This band is really brilliant!

We heard about her making a video for 28 quid in 2003 and filming it at the local Virgin Records after hours and her “anti video” made the news. It was for ‘Mainstream’, her try at a “state of the union address” and another great song from Avalanche. I loved this setlist and she had not promised too much in  the beginning when she said they’d play a lot of old songs.

“I love playing live, it makes me very very happy”. And seeing you live makes me very happy. The next song, ‘The Bright Service ‘,was at the same time the most divisive and the  most requested song off of he new album, with people saying they did not want to pay to listen to a therapy session. “To be fair, it’s cheap.” She added “whether you like it or not, I’m still gonna force you to sing it”. It was beautiful, part song, part poetry and we all did the “la la la” sing along part in the end, continuing until Thea left the stage and only the band kept playing on. It made me feel like being part of a bigger community. <3

We all cheered for her to come back and got a great encore too. Thea thanked us again and said she’s just have enough time for two more before the curfew. First was ‘And We’ll Dance’, one of the Songs from the Gutter. It’s an album I don’t own. I enjoyed the song all the more for it. She left us with a Christmas song, joking that in Nottingham someone had answered her question if we liked Christmas with “No!” We learned that she had been inspired to write it by one of her friends saying that nobody writes Christmas songs any more and urged her to write a song. It was the beautiful ‘Midwinter Toast’, the perfect ending to a perfect show.

Afterwards, I did not go back to the merch, because I had already bought a mug before the show. I#ll have a word with Thea after the next show I’ll see. For now I was just happy to have made the trip to London for this one. It was so worth it.

Setlist

This Girl Is Taking Bets / Nice Normal Woman
When Did You Get So Safe
Unravel Me
She Speaks in Colours
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper cover)
Razor Valentine
Avalanche
My Own Private Riot
Rise
Bones
Mainstream
The Bright Service

Encore:
And We’ll Dance
Midwinter Toast