Friday 30 September 2011

Thea Gilmore - Angels In The Abattoir (September 2011)

This month Thea has provided her lovely Angels with five (yes five!) demos from her 2000 album The Lipstick Conspiracies. This is not my favourite Thea Gilmore record; her début Burning Dorothy and follow-up Rules For Jokers are both excellent in comparison. Anyway, the five demos are:
  • Lidocaine Baby
  • Exit Route
  • Forgotten
  • Generation Y
  • Night Driving
Thea says about the demos: "These come with a proviso though.... the next time I see you all, you must must promise not to laugh in my face about the silly Minnie Mouse American accent I'm using on them. I was young, foolish, listening to far too much Joni. Aaaargh.. maybe I've been too hasty! Enjoy the giggle!"

As you might expect these songs are very stripped-down complete with scratchy guitar and raw vocals. In spite of Thea's critical assessment, she sounds fantastic. Young and filled with energy and angst. Forgotten (probably the best song) is complete with a cheesy drum machine. The frantic Generation Y needs a lot of work and it shows greatly the benefits of these early takes to see how the finished articles evolved. Night Driving is not far from the final version.

Some new songs next month please!

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