Thea Gilmore

Thea Gilmore is a British folk singer-songwriter from Oxford, England. Born in 1979 to Irish parents, she begins her career in a recording studio after leaving home at 16. While working there, she is discovered by producer and occasional co-songwriter Nigel Stonier, who becomes her long-term collaborator and later her husband.

Gilmore records her debut album, Burning Dorothy, as a teenager and releases it in 1998. Over the next few years she issues a run of albums that build her reputation in the UK music press, even though they do not bring chart success at first. Her early work includes a period of high productivity between January 1999 and August 2003, during which she records and releases six albums, including four official releases and two cult albums originally intended only for internet release.

She gains a wider breakthrough with Avalanche in 2003, her first album to enter the Official UK Album Chart, where it reaches No. 62. The album becomes Radio 2’s Album of the Week and produces two minor hit singles, including her first Top 40 single, “Juliet”. It also marks a significant step up in critical profile and radio support.

Her music draws on her father’s record collection, which includes Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits. She is known for lyrics that address life, love, sex, death, politics and war, and for a vocal style often described as soft but forceful. As a young artist she is compared with figures including Joni Mitchell, Ryan Adams and Tom Waits.

In 2001 she releases Rules For Jokers, which attracts airplay and wider attention. In 2004 she tours the United States in support of Joan Baez. During this period she is diagnosed with clinical depression and separates from Stonier in her personal relationship, though they continue to work and tour together. They later resume their relationship and marry in October 2005 near their home in Cheshire.

Gilmore returns with Harpo’s Ghost in 2006 after a three-year gap in new material. The album again receives strong critical response, and the single “Cheap Tricks” gains radio support. Her 2004 covers album Loft Music is also widely released. She gives birth to her first child, a son named Egan, in November 2006, after touring in the UK while heavily pregnant.

Across her career, Gilmore receives repeated praise from the music press, including comments from Uncut, Mojo and Q that place her among the leading British singer-songwriters of her era.