Thea Gilmore : 'Strange Communion'
Released: Out Now!!!
Label: Fruitcake
What exactly the ‘strange communion’ is in Thea Gilmore’s album is very much up for debate, although I could hazard a guess. Whilst piety is so obviously there – advertised by references to her backing ‘choir’, religious imagery and script in the album sleeve, let alone the ‘holy’ lyrics peppering the songs – it is countered by the demotic and rustic lyrics of folk and human experience.
This mostly comes in the form of signing about alcoholic drinking, which makes appearances many of her songs, in a number of different forms, from singing about Tia Maria’s or Belgian beer to drunken angels.
Is it correct to say the album title refers to the strange communion between the sacred and the profane perhaps? You would be inclined to think so. Folk music has so much grounding in paganism that merely the generic facets of this album and its religious overtones point to an interesting balance.
The first two songs reinforce this with both sounding like Christian ballads. Whilst popular Christian music is quite an acquired taste, the folk delivery and Gilmore’s haunting and sweet vocals make the opening a triumph. The calls to praise such as “rise up, rise up” and “the angel heaven lights/[...]/Here’s my hymn to you all/Ooooh, Hallelujah” from Sol Invictus and Thea Gilmore’s Midwinter Toast, respectively merely confirm the hymnal aspects.
At this juncture, it is wise to point out that this is a Christmas album. Gilmore is therefore following in the footsteps of other folksters Bob Dylan and Sufjan Stevens. There follows what is a medley of folksy pop songs, ballads, dirges, a poem and a fantastic cover of Elvis Costello’s The St. Stephen’s Day Murders which reads like a comical local yarn from the memory of a toothless old ’un who sits in the corner of the pub. The duet evokes feelings of the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York – Gilmore incidentally provides her own Big Apple based Christmas ditty in December in New York, although this is much bleaker.
Christmas albums are tough to pull off but Gilmore makes an admirable fist of it, providing enough variation to keep you interested. Besides the Costello cover, December in New York, Cold Coming and Drunken Angel are all fantastic individual tracks highlighting her genre variations.
It can be safely said she will not be used for the government’s drink aware campaign in future festive periods. But I will drink to that.
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