Album Review

Thea Gilmore – Murphy’s Heart

• 13th Aug 2010

Ever since starting out ten albums ago, the Oxfordshire born Thea Gilmore has captured her various moods, attitudes and insights in her expansive and expressive albums. Not in the slightest put off by the Susan Boyles and Cheryl Coles of this world, Thea opens up her tenth album with a poetic blues, hollow percussion licked and attitudinal strut, ‘This Town’. An ability to capture downtrodden feelings and put them squarely into perspective is a skill that this bona fide artist has definitely not lost.

It’s only two tracks in when the flighty, yet at times whisperingly haunting opening and piercingly magic poetic touch of old slides out, ‘God’s Got Nothing On You’. It features lyrical insight aplenty:
“Did you raise a glass in progress name and tell the sky to do the same?
Call me patient, call me quiet and call my bluff Honey; I don’t buy it!
Another nail in another oak, another punchline another dirty joke.
And God’s got nothing you.”

There’s always a delving nature to this sincere songstress, but the tightness between artist and backing band is as prolific as ever. This helps the backing to be able to match the shifts in emphasis from yearning and introspective to outwardly uplifting. It’s a striking feature in this album, as always. ‘Automatic Blue’, uses the hushed and caressing touch of an acoustic lead on top of a slowly sore vocal echo to mull upon life, love, loss and memories.

Gilmore continues to possess the ability to quickly draw you into her psyche and uses the versatility of her robust backing band to play around with emotions. ‘Teach Me To Be Bad’, shows the full rich veined nature of Gilmore and co, springing out from a colourful opening of the JAMES ilk , before expanding into a horn pushed, full bodied pop parade. However, a yearning echo adds a touch of seriousness to the bounding instrumentals.

‘How The Love Gets In’, is a hovering gospel tinged ballad that uses a key-led trickle to show off Gilmore’s emotive pull, as she strips down feelings of fragility in affairs of the heart.

This is certainly a tenth album to be proud of and there is no sense of a single forced feeling whatsoever.

Rating: 4/5