Thea Gilmore’s These Quiet Friends is her 21st studio album and unlike any other she’s made. She talks to Alan Pedder about her love – and fear – of covers, and the songs that have soundtracked her life.
“It’s come to my attention that I am the worst person to ask about my own career,” says Thea Gilmore, laughing, as she suddenly realises that her new album These Quiet Friends is actually her third covers record, and not her second as she’s been telling everyone.
The memoryholed recording in question, a track-by-track reinterpretation of Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding, is one that she would probably not attempt now – even at the time, in 2011, she had her reservations – simply because his music means too much. Growing up in the Oxfordshire countryside, Gilmore’s father introduced her from an early age to Dylan and contemporaries like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen – sacred cows of his collection that would, in turn, become hers as well.
Her Dylan curio aside, Gilmore’s repertoire of covers ranges from Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”, from 2001’s As If EP, through Loft Music’s rough ‘n’ ready handful of ‘60s and ‘70s rock and punk classics, to These Quiet Friends standouts like Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” and an unlikely take on the Miley Cyrus smash “Wrecking Ball”.
“In the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve relied on other people’s music to get me through some tough times, more than I have in a really long while,” she explains. “These Quiet Friends came out of realising that I kept coming back to the same songs over and again, and I suppose kind of turned up the volume a little bit on how much I personally, and we as humans, rely on melody and words to hold our hands through difficulties.”
The hardship she refers to is the complete obliteration of her marriage to her former producer – a man 23 years her senior, whom she’d met at age 16 – when the prison of coercive control and mistreatment he’d built around her finally crumbled in 2019. With her world in tatters and facing bitter divorce proceedings, she turned to other people’s art to anchor her to earth.
Music, especially, played a central role in her journey back to wholeness and reclaiming her own story – a reckoning and creative rebirth captured on her 2021’s Afterlight and 2023’s self-titled LP. “What happened was incredibly shit,” she says flatly. “But, you know, I got two amazing kids and endless food for songs out of it, and I can’t really argue with that.”
It can sometimes keep her awake at night though, and the concept behind These Quiet Friends is, simply, “a soft celebration of how great songs can serve as keystones in a life – the 2am confidantes you can reach for when no one else is around.” It’s a collection full of surprises, from the bruised and bare boned take on “Cabaret” that opens the record through to the honeyed hush of “Tonight You Belong to Me” at the end, but the choices feel quite pointed too.
It’s not hard to see how songs like “Crazy He Calls Me” (Billie Holiday), “Hey Jealousy” (Gin Blossoms) and “Everybody Hurts” (R.E.M.) fit into Gilmore’s own narrative, and even “Wrecking Ball” makes perfect sense – like “The Killing Moon”, it dances with destruction in the name of so-called love – while “Cabaret” sets the tone for digesting what’s to come. “What good is sitting alone in your room?” she sings teasingly, as if to say, “Sit back, friend, and take it from a woman who knows.”
Agonising for weeks over her Nine Songs, Gilmore eventually decided not to include any of the songs she’s previously covered. “If I could have brought something fresh and new and wonderful to the songs that I’ve picked, I probably would have covered those too, but I couldn’t because the originals are just insanely brilliant as they are,” she explains. “I’m not saying that the originals of the songs that I have put on the album aren’t insanely brilliant, because they are. There was just a part of me that thought I could possibly bring something slightly different out of those.”
That’s why you’ll never hear her cover Leonard or Joni, she confirms. “People sometimes get quite pissy when I won’t play their requests, but I’d rather give them something good than something that I know won’t work,” she explains. “Revisiting songs that you love can be so much fun. I love figuring out what you can do with them, and there’s something quite liberating about that, in that you’re not singing your own words so there’s a degree of pressure taken off there. But then there’s a degree of pressure that’s added, in taking on the responsibility of tackling someone else’s composition sensitively and feeling like you can put your own meaningful spin on it.”
If there’s a red thread that connects the Nine Songs she’s chosen, it’s about finding the strength and fortitude to reassemble your self-worth after a fall, to realign your expectations in a world that’s often feels hostile at best. Naturally, it starts with ill-fated romance...
"Rain Dogs" by Tom Waits
THEA GILMORE: The album Rain Dogs was the first Tom Waits I ever heard, and I can remember exactly where I was at the time, because I wasn’t actually that young. I was probably around 20, and it was in the front room of my manager’s house in a little town up in the northwest of England. She’d put it on and left the room, and I remember very clearly sitting there alone, listening to Rain Dogs, and feeling absolutely blown away by every single noise that was coming at me, and the incredible lyrics. I couldn’t really get my head around it at first. It was like I was being hit with too much information at once. Like, how can somebody sing like that? How can these lyrics be so good? I got up and grabbed the lyric booklet from the CD and went through every song thinking, ‘What the fuck is this? This is insane.’
When the song “Rain Dogs” came on and I heard that extraordinary percussion that sounds almost like water running down, and it just left me breathless. I wanted to listen to it forever. I think I actually begged my manager to let me borrow the CD for a while, because I didn’t really have much money at the time. Eventually I got the album on vinyl and I’ve played that to death too.
I think what I love about Tom Waits is really the theatrical nature of everything he does. I don’t think I’d really heard that in music before, and I didn’t even know that it was possible until that moment. You know, I was right at the beginning of my career, still finding my feet as a musician, but once that door opened for me – once I realised ‘Oh, you can write as another person, you don’t have to be completely literal, and you can bring elements of theatre into what you do – it was like somebody had rolled out some kind of magic carpet that I really wanted to get on and see where it took me.
“Rain Dogs” really crystallised that feeling for me, and a lot of that had to do with the percussion and what I later found out was Michael Blair’s contribution. I was lucky enough to work with Michael on a couple of my tracks, and I felt then, and still feel now, that he’s this insanely talented, superpowered musician. I can’t believe that he’s not a household name, I really can’t. And, for me, to have been able to work with somebody who worked on Rain Dogs was magical. One day I’ll get Marc Ribot as well. I would love that.
Is there a particular Thea Gilmore song that's most influenced by Tom Waits?
[laughs] I think probably every song I wrote from that point onwards is influenced by Tom. There are so many, genuinely. There’s a song called “St. Luke’s Summer” on Rules for Jokers (2001) that has probably too much Tom. There’s probably quite a few that have too much Tom in them, especially on that album, which I think was the first one I made after hearing Rain Dogs.
The trouble with me, particularly at that time, was that I wrote so quickly that whatever I was listening to came out really quickly in my own songs. It was like my musical digestive system was working overtime. All of a sudden, I would hear those influences popping out in my music and, because I was so young, it was probably before I really learned that you can’t just ‘copy’, right? I needed to make the songs my own.
"Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen
BEST FIT: In an interview you did with The Big Issue, you named “Everybody Knows” as a song you wish you had written. What draws you to it so strongly?
THEA GILMORE: I think it’s probably fair to say that every Leonard Cohen song is a song I wish I’d written, but “Everybody Knows” was one of the first of his songs that I heard so it will always have a special meaning to me. It was another lightbulb moment for me, like “Holy shit, there’s some fucking amazing music out there.”
With Leonard, it’s always the lyric that gets me first. “Everybody Knows” was written in 1988, so it’s referencing the AIDS crisis and issues very current to that day, but it just gets more and more relevant with every passing year. If you put that record on now, to me it feels like it could have been written about what’s happening in the world right now, and that’s the mark of the most expert piece of writing and the mark of an absolute genius. Leonard was somebody who I feel like could definitely see the future in some way, like he says in another song, “I’ve seen the future, brother: It is murder.”
Another thing about the lyric to “Everybody Knows”, besides remaining so incredibly relevant, is that even though it’s so dark and it feels so apocalyptic, it’s still got that little Cohen chuckle behind it. That sort of stoical outlook and smile he had, as if saying ‘Yeah, it is what it is. Let’s go and have a beer and not worry too much about it.’ I do love that about him as well, because, realistically, what can we do about so much of the shit that goes on? You can write a song and try to shine a light on it, but what else?
Do you remember how Leonard first came into your life?
I really don’t, at least not for sure. I think it was probably through my dad playing me “Suzanne” and his early, more folky stuff. Leonard was a bit like Bob Dylan, who’s another one of those omnipresent, always-been-there artists that I grew up with. With Leonard, though, it wasn’t until I was around 20 or 21 that I got past the folky stuff and into his later stuff, like The Future, and into the strange, sort-of electronica that he was doing. I hadn’t heard any of that before and, again, it probably influenced me far too much for far too long a time. I mean, you can listen to a song like “Apparition No. 13” and know that it’s me desperately trying to see if I can write a song like “Everybody Knows” and desperately, desperately failing.
You mentioned earlier that you’d be reluctant to record your own version of a Leonard song because you adore him too much, but you did perform “Dance Me to the End of Love” live at a tribute show after his death.
Yeah, I did, but it was really, really hard.. It’s a beautiful song to sing, and it will always be a joy to perform it, but I don’t think I brought anything new or particularly relevant to the song. People sometimes like to hear songs written and performed by men, sung by women, which I always think is a bit odd, but I think ti went down quite well. People seem to like my version and I think I did an okay job, but I’m not him. I would never record it though. I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right without his voice and that smile. It’s always about the smile with Leonard.
Is there any Leonard Cohen cover that you really rate?
I'm going to be really honest and say no! [laughs]
People have been asking me a lot about cover versions lately, obviously, and people often say things like, “Oh, but don’t you prefer Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Hallelujah’,” and I just don’t. It’s really simple. No, I don’t. It’s a great version, but I don’t prefer it. I actually prefer John Cale’s version of “Hallelujah” to Jeff’s, but it’s not Leonard. It has to be Leonard. There’s no point if it’s not Leonard.
Did you ever meet him?
No, and I don't know what I'd have done if I had. I wouldn’t have wanted to. I never got to see him live either. It has always, always killed me that I was at Glastonbury 2008 when he played but I couldn’t stay to watch. I had to go home. Can you imagine how awful that was? And, obviously, that was the last chance I’d ever have to see him.
"Hi Ren" by Ren
BEST FIT: This is a really fascinating choice, and a song I’d somehow never heard before, even though it has almost 50 million views on YouTube. What does it mean to you?
THEA GILMORE: Well, I’m a bit of a TikTok addict, which is maybe an unlikely thing for me to be, but I just love watching it. Not joining in with it, because I can’t stand making TikToks, although I’m aware I have to try at least a little bit. Anyway, this song kept coming up. I kept seeing this video of this dude in a hospital gown playing an acoustic guitar, and I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’, and just had to listen to the whole thing. I’d never heard of him before, even though he’s been on the scene for quite a while, and it absolutely blew my mind. Everything about it: the whole split personality thing, and the way it expands and contracts, going from nothing but him alone with the guitar to him rapping, to a spoken-word section, and then he just completely breaks character, comes out into the real world and just talks.
It absolutely restored all faith in me that there are people making incredible, relevant, and exciting songs, and it also restored my faith that you don’t need the traditional music industry machine to elevate yourself. It’s not that I had lost faith that there were people making great music, but in the possibility of that music reaching large chunks of the population. The way that music delivery systems have gone, it’s become so difficult to focus people’s attentions in one place for long enough to make a real connection.
So, seeing this TikTok, which was a long one, and seeing people’s reactions and reaction videos to it, it was fascinating to see how it just kept growing and growing. It was sort of like watching an avalanche in real time. And the fact that it was so brilliant, so artistic and modern and relevant really made me feel like coming back into the fold a little bit, not with the industry because I don’t really believe in that, but with, I suppose, people’s joy in music. I loved the fact that he’d really put his neck on the line in a lot of ways, both in terms of how it sounded and of what he was talking about, so the fact that people were absolutely buying into it and having this really beautifully human response to this beautifully human track was a big thing for me.
There’s a lot to unpack in it, that’s for sure.
Yeah, and I really recommend that you go and have a listen to some of his earlier stuff as well. It’s all really, really good. He’s a real force. Like, there’s some shit that man has got to do and I’m fully along for the ride. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
"Shy" by Ani DiFranco
BEST FIT: This track is from Ani’s sixth album, Not a Pretty Girl, which came out in 1995, when you were 15. Was that when you connected with it?
THEA GILMORE: I was a bit older, 17 I think, because I seem to remember that the album was released a bit later in the UK. There was a great little record shop where I lived at the time, in Banbury, called Record Savings, and they would do the classic record story thing of having little handwritten notes from the staff members recommending their favourites, and I fucking loved that.
I remember going in one day, having just about saved up enough money for a CD, which were not cheap at the time, and saw Not a Pretty Girl there on the racks. On the little note that someone had written I saw that it was released on the Cooking Vinyl label. Now, I knew shit about shit, frankly, when I was 17, but I did know the name Cooking Vinyl because I knew it was associated with Billy Bragg, who I loved, so that was enough for me. Like, these dudes at Record Savings, who I thought were impossibly cool, thought it was good, it was on Cooking Vinyl, and the cover art looked really cool. That was a bit tick for me, so I bought it.
At that age, buying a CD like that, of an artist I hadn’t heard, really felt like a big investment and a big risk, because it was my money. When I got home and put it on, it was really another one of those extraordinary moments, a real revelation. And, again, it was really about the lyrics, as it usually is with me. I was so struck by that sort of in-your-face directness that Ani DiFranco does so well, without losing the poetry in her writing.
It made such a huge impression on me, as a young woman who was sort of learning to write songs and trying to figure out who I was and where I stood. So, hearing a woman do all that without sounding flowery was amazing. Not a Pretty Girl is an incredibly feminine album but not feminine in a Tori Amos way. It was aggressively feminine. There was no floweriness involved, and I love that because it was sort of how I felt but could never put words to.
I hadn’t yet heard PJ Harvey or anyone like that. I had grown up with Alanis Morissette, but that was a bit different, and I wasn’t sure I really related to her. It’s weird, because all these women that I was listening to at the time, although I loved them, I didn’t feel like they spoke in the same way I felt that I spoke. And then all of a sudden Ani DiFranco came along. Now, I didn’t speak like that, don’t get me wrong, but I fucking wanted to.
Hearing “Shy” for the first time, I was totally grabbed by the bassline – this beautiful, singing bassline – and I’ve been kind of chasing that bassline ever since but I don’t think I’ve ever found it. It was incredible to hear a song where the bass itself really had something to say, and I was hooked on Ani’s music from that point onwards. I begged my dad for more money and went back and bought all of the back catalogue that Cooking Vinyl had brought out at the time, which I think was only three albums at the time, and I was a passionate Ani DiFranco fan from that point onwards.
I went to see her at Shepherds Bush Empire soon after, which was the first big London gig that I’d ever seen, and she was amazing. I remember she did the most incredible rendition of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and the whole crowd was singing along. She had Andy Stochansky on drums and Sara Lee on bass, and I remember thinking how much I wanted to be her. Again, she’s not somebody I think I could meet though. I think I’d be very, very scared to.
You did take on her role as Persephone in Hadestown though, at London’s Union Chapel in 2011. How was that for you?
It was a hell of an ask. Anaïs Mitchell called me up and said, ‘Hey, could you be Ani DiFranco for a night?’ and I was like, ‘Well, I can try…’. Hell of an ask, but fabulous.
"Don't You Know Who I Am" by Reb Fountain
BEST FIT: I'm happy to see this New Zealand artist on the list. What’s your connection to Reb Fountain and to this particular song?
THEA GILMORE: I heard this during the first lockdown, which was a weird time for me in so many ways because my whole life had just absolutely disintegrated not long before the pandemic started. In a way, for me, lockdown felt very much like the natural progression of where everything should be when your world crumbles. It was so horrific for so many people, but everything just stopping sort of made sense because it had already stopped for me.
I see that time really as the beginnings of a reconnection to music, because for a long time my associations with music and what I could and couldn’t listen to had been quite maneuvered. I hadn’t really been able to search out what I liked, or maybe I just hadn’t wanted to because it felt like there wasn’t any room for it. During lockdown, I found myself completely alone with my two boys, and I suddenly had this huge amount of time to just listen to stuff and be present with new music. I started to share music with friends, and friends would share music with me, and one of the songs I was sent, by a really good friend, was this one by Reb Fountain.
I didn’t know anything about her before listened to the song and, wow, it was just extraordinary. It also felt very relevant to me at the time because it’s a song about transitioning from one person to another person, which was really what I was sort of doing during that first lockdown. I also loved the way it sounds. It has this incredible, almost lazy loping feel to it, and that really hit right for me at the time. It felt like a slightly spiky hug, and I really like that.
"Behave Myself" by She Drew the Gun
BEST FIT: I get a bit of a Thea Gilmore vibe from this song, especially in the way that Louisa Roach delivers the first line “I’m the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.” I know that’s actually a quote lifted from a radical lesbian manifesto, but she really sells it. Great choice!
THEA GILMORE: The funny thing is that the album this song is on, also called Behave Myself, came out pretty much within two weeks of my Afterlight album, so I hadn’t heard it until after I’d been exploring and getting more invested in spoken word poetry. I’d say that poetry was my first real love, right back when I was a tiny kid. I just loved messing about with words and sort of bending them, so it felt quite validating in a way when I heard “Behave Myself”, and later “Hi Ren”, to hear that other people were doing it. But also feeling like, ‘Fuck me, they are doing it so much better.’
What I love about “Behave Myself” is that it’s not rage-filled but there’s a real, sort of simmering anger to it, which I was obviously hooked on instantly. I felt like she was saying what I want to say but am probably, or was probably, a bit too nervous or worried by life to say. I think I’m probably better at that now, but certainly at that time, in 2021, I was in the process of finding my feet again. I loved that Louisa and the band took on all these massive, important issues and just fucking said her piece – very like Ani DiFranco, actually – in that absolutely-not-giving-a-fuck way.
I felt like I really needed to hear that. Louisa felt, to me, like the friend who comes and intervenes when you’re getting hassled at a bar. I would walk on stage to this song in the first tour that I did after everything that happened – the solo tour – because I needed the bravery and I didn’t have it. And Louisa, god bless her, gave it to me in spades. Funnily enough, She Drew the Gun were playing in my hometown recently for Independent Venue Week, in what was basically a nightclub, and I went to see them. It was fantastic, but it was so weird to hear them playing “Behave Myself”, because I was totally torn between absolutely loving every second of it and also feeling like I was about to walk on stage.
So, yeah, this song has become part of the soundtrack of my life, as I’m sure it has to many, many other people. For me, that’s a mark of true brilliance. If you can pull that off, and become one of the keystones of somebody’s life soundtrack, that’s a magical thing to be able to do. And she definitely did if for me.
Have you been able to tell her how much the song means to you?
You know what? I have been in the room with her twice, and I even booked her once when I was working for a music venue, but I’ve never once spoken to her. There’s a bit of a recurring theme here, isn’t there? I think I just don’t like meeting people whose work I love. I mean, I was literally standing three metres away from her last month, and I didn’t even turn around, which is a bit pathetic. I should have done. But I think I just tend to assume that everybody else is like me and doesn’t know what to do or where to put themselves when someone compliments them face-to-face. But maybe she’ll read this and know how special it was to me.
"Feeling Good" by Nina Simone
BEST FIT: Next up, you’ve chosen a stone-cold classic, “Feeling Good”, which turns 60 this year. What does this one mean to you?
THEA GILMORE: Wow, 60? Goodness me. I don’t know, it’s just one of those songs that has always been there. It’s always been a song that I reach for when I need a shot in the arm or something. A reminder of strength through adversity, I guess. Again, it’s a courage thing. A lot of these songs are about courage and about building yourself back up, and “Feeling Good” has always been that for me. It’s just joyous. It has this incredible warmth to it.
There’s very little that Nina Simone has sung that I didn’t instantly love. Because of her voice, because of who she was and everything she stood for, and how absolutely uncompromising and fierce she was. Again, probably not someone I’d have wanted to meet necessarily, and certainly not somebody you’d want to cross. She was just this extraordinary force, and I think, out of every song of hers, I think “Feeling Good” is the one where all that comes across: the warmth, the fierceness, the kind of forward motion that she had. It instantly helps.
I couldn’t agree more. Where do you stand on Nina Simone covers then?
Well, this might be a bit contentious to some people, but I had a really weird experience with a cover of “Feeling Good”, and it was during the one and only time I ever played Later… with Jools Holland, in 2001, when I was 21. Muse were also on the show, and it’s fair to say that I’m not the world’s biggest Must fan anyway, but they covered “Feeling Good” and it was honestly the most awful thing to hear these three incredibly privileged white boys butchering it. I hated every second of it.
To be fair to Muse, they are talented guys, but fucking hell, there really was no need to choose that song. No need. I remember I was sitting next to Don Letts and I was just dying inside, and I strongly suspect that so was he, but nobody said anything.
"We Watch the Stars" by Fink
THEA GILMORE: I don’t even know how this song found its way into my ears, but I suspect it was on a soundtrack because I spent an awful lot of time in my room in 2019 just watching miserable movies, and it seems to me that this is the kind of song that would be on the soundtrack to a miserable movie. I probably Shazamed it, and since then it’s become almost a guided meditation for me.
I love Fink’s voice, and I adore the way he plays guitar. He creates such a beautiful soundscape with this song. It really takes you on a journey, even though, unusually for me, it’s pretty light on lyrics. That’s not my usual go-to, as you know, but every lyric is perfectly placed and everything he says is absolutely necessary. I think, sometimes, that sort of brevity can really bring you into the present moment, particularly if you’re like me and can spent hours analysing what people are saying and how they are saying it, what metaphors they are using, and so on.
Sometimes the directness of a song like “We Watch the Stars” is exactly what I need to quieten things down, and that’s really what it does for me. The sound of it has a sort of cinematic breadth that keeps me calm. It’s a song that I often put on just before I go to sleep, which isn’t an easy thing for me. I’ve got a Rolodex brain, as I call it. As soon as I lie down, my brain starts to spin and I can’t stop it, and very often I’ll just be awake all night. So, Fink helps me out, bless him.
"Colors" by Black Pumas
THEA GILMORE: Far be it from me to be the main character here, but hearing “Colors” for the first time when it came out really felt like it was designed to drop into my life at the perfect time. Anyone who knows me will tell you that this song has been the song that, when the shit hits the fan, when I’m feeling really happy, or when I’m pissed off – at any important moment of heightened emotion, really, whether good or bad – this song will get put on and it never fails to move people. It’s four minutes of pure, unadulterated joy, and even people who didn’t know it before will be singing along by the end.
It's been a long time since I’ve witnessed a song do that to large groups of people, and to me it’s so joyous that it’s almost overwhelming. The gospel element of it feels really hopeful, as gospel often does. It gives this instant feeling of hope, I think, just to hear lots and lots of voices singing together, which is then intensified by the praise element of gospel choirs. I can’t not smile when that song comes on, and there are very, very few songs that I, of all people, would say that about. It’s a really, really short list. Anything that makes me smile every single time must have some sort of superpower.
BEST FIT: I’m intrigued now. What else is on that short list?
[laughs] Oh my god, you’ve really put me on the spot now. My mind’s gone completely blank. I might have to come back to you on that one. That’s terrible, isn’t it? But I really can’t think of anything.
I do remember a conversation I had at a festival with Mark Radcliffe and David Boardman, who are in a band together, and finding out that Mark swears by The New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give”. My first reaction was yeaahhhh, I’m not sure about that. But then everyone started to sing it and I thought, ‘Oh, wait, maybe he’s right?’
I’m still not sure, but it is interesting to hear other people’s take on it. I don’t think it does the same for me as it does for him, because I was at exactly the age where you would easily get bored of something that was being played all the time, whereas he was the one at the radio station playing it all the time. It got a bit much, you know?
These Quiet Friends is out now. Thea Gilmore is on tour from next week.
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