Thea Gilmore – My Own Private Riot 2008-2015 (7CD Boxset)

Thea Gilmore has made 21 albums, and counting, across a diverse range of genres we can summarise as folk rock. The first, Burning Dorothy, was released in 1998, and a further six followed before we reach the period covered by this new set. Cherry Red have gathered the next seven albums, released between 2008 and 2015, added a selection of bonus tracks to each where available, and reissued them as a boxed set. If you’ve not encountered Gilmore before, this is a generous selection of music to get you started.

This is not a full review of all seven of these albums. What follows is a brief overview of each; sufficient, I trust, to give you a taste of Gilmore’s music.

She described the first featured here, Liejacker, as her most personal to date. Her growing reputation was recognised by Joan Baez, who duets on The Lower Road. Gilmore has a rich, dark voice that carries the subtleties of melody; their combined voices are lovely on this gentle song. Dance in New York is effortlessly epic (so not effortless at all, really).

Away from her own songwriting, Gilmore is happy to cover the songs she enjoys, whatever their origin or genre; for example, here we have You Spin Me Right Round, originally a hit single for Dead or Alive. A bit of fun, but perhaps adapted too much to enable it to fit the Gilmore canon.

The next two albums are from 2009. Recorded Delivery is a live album with acoustic and electric sides. In the booklet, she comments she’s never been a massive fan of live albums because a gig is meant to be an ephemeral experience (Bruce Springsteen used to say that, too, and these days we’re spoilt for choice). It’s a valid point because no live album can fully capture the lived experience of having been there, but by definition, most of us can’t be at the majority of gigs. A great live album might still be a shadow of the original experience, but it’s better than nothing at all. Among this diverse song selection is This Girl is Taking Bets, from the electric side, a song that has tracked across Gilmore’s career, changing from its first rockabilly incarnation to this pseudo-rap delivery we hear now. This is the authentic voice of a song that means something to the performer.

The 2009 studio album was Strange Communion, a Christmas album passed through the Thea Gilmore filter. The best-known track from this project is the single That’ll Be Christmas, the single mix of which is a bonus track here, and it should be a Christmas radio repeat play. Perhaps the lack of sleigh bells holds it back, along with the typically cynical Thea Gilmore lyrics. “There’s a choir of angels / A choir of soaks / And there’s drunk relations telling dirty jokes / Oh no.” The project arose after a comment to Gilmore from the late Janice Long, complaining that there were no new Christmas songs to play on the radio. Gilmore promised to write one, and Long got it into her show immediately – it’s called Thea Gilmour’s Midwinter Toast and is track two on this unusual, lovely and adventurous album.

A year later came Murphy’s Heart. Gilmore is a true artist in the sense that she writes and records from her heart, whether or not the record company (or her listeners) are ready for it. As she says, “I like surprising people and not fitting into boxes. It’s got to be fun – if it’s not, what’s the point?” She could also have been talking about the track Jazz Hands – “a gobby song about sex” which, apparently, nobody wanted on the record. This album is both aggressive and gently feminine. Never think you know what Gilmore is going to do next.

What came next was another unusual project, 2011’s John Wesley Harding, the Bob Dylan album played in its entirety. The idea of covering a whole album, not just a song or two, is fascinating. There are other examples – for example, there are at least two full covers of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and one of The Who Sell Out. The genesis of Gilmore’s project was covering I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine for a music magazine CD, and it grew from there. She includes an unusual take on the classic All Along the Watchtower – if you thought the Jimi Hendrix version was wild, try this.

To return to Gilmore’s thoughts published in the booklet, this is her view of covers: “If you can’t do something that changes the way people hear a song, there’s no point in doing it in the first place.” Completely right. What is the point of doing a new record almost exactly like the original? Cloning the original is very clever, hard to do, and proves your level of skill as a musician (one side of Todd Rundgren’s album Faithful is one example), but in the end, why?

Next, Gilmore returns to original songwriting on Regardless (2013). Her songs often have a dark undertone, and this is given room to breathe here. Listen to I Will Not Disappoint You as she addresses the challenges of motherhood; downbeat, gentle, and extraordinarily beautiful. Of My Friend Goodbye, she speaks of crying when she hears it, “and I wrote the bloody thing.”

The final album here is from 2015 – Ghosts and Graffiti. This time, Gilmore returns to some of her older songs and revisits them; in keeping with her view of covers, these are not contractual obligation re-records, but new approaches. No song worth its salt can only be performed one way. The earlier versions of some of these songs feature in this boxed set, and there are many songs from her earliest days. Gilmore is never afraid to take a chance.

It’s worth noting that there was another Thea Gilmore album during the period covered by this box. Gilmore was commissioned by the estate of Sandy Denny to write melodies for some of Denny’s unreleased lyrics. The inclusion of this album would have provided more depth on Gilmore’s career, but this was a separate Island Records project, so it would seem it was not available.

Gilmore continues to release albums regularly, including one under the name of ‘Afterlight’. As well as her recent album, These Quiet Friends, she has now devised an idea, The Echo Line, that allows people to ‘phone in their personal stories, some of which she will craft into a song. Not a song for a new album, nor even to be released at all, just an ephemeral response to emotion.’ This ephemeral nature of music is one of her themes, alongside emotion and her sheer originality.

When you need a palate cleanser after one too many heavy prog concept albums about the apocalypse, here it is. Gilmore can have a dark tone, but it’s personal, and life goes on. Even this seven-album box is only a sample of Thea Gilmore. What’s next?

TRACK LISTING
Disc One – Liejacker
01. Old Soul
02. Black Letter
03. Dance In New York
04. Rosie
05. Roll On
06. Icarus Wind
07. The Wrong Side
08. Slow Journey
09. And You Shall Know No Other God
10. When I Get Back to Shore
11. Breathe
12. The Lower Road
~ Bonus tracks:
13. You Spin Me Right Round
14. Come Up With Me (Single)
15. Honesty Box (Single)

Disc Two – Recorded Delivery
– Part One: Acoustic
01. Old Soul
02. Concrete
03. You And Frank Sinatra
04. Rosie
05. The Lower Road
06. If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus
07. Icarus Wind
– Part Two: Electric
08. Have You Heard?
09. Juliet
10. Everybody’s Numb
11. This Girl Is Taking Bets
12. My Own Private Riot
13. Rags And Bones
14. When I Get Back to Shore
15. Inverigo

Disc Three – Strange Communion
01. Sol Invictus
02. Thea Gilmore’s Midwinter Toast
03. Cold Coming
04. That’ll Be Christmas
05. Listen, The Snow Is Falling
06. Drunken Angel
07. The St Stephens Day Murders
08. December In New York
09. Book Of Christmas (Includes Excerpt From ‘Autumn Journal’)
10. Old December
~ Bonus tracks:
11. December
12. That’ll Be Christmas (Single Mix)

Disc Four – Murphy’s Heart
01. This Town
02. God’s Got Nothing on You
03. Due South
04. Jazz Hands
05. Love’s The Greatest Instrument of Rage
06. Automatic Blue
07. Coffee And Roses
08. You’re The Radio
09. Teach Me to Be Bad
10. Not Alone
11. How The Love Gets In
12. Mexico
13. Wondrous Thing
~ Bonus tracks:
14. Favourite Absentee
15. Several Angels
16. Something to Sing About

Disc Five – John Wesley Harding
01. John Wesley Harding
02. As I Went Out One Morning
03. I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine
04. All Along the Watchtower
05. The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
06. Drifter’s Escape
07. Dear Landlord
08. I Am a Lonesome Hobo
09. I Pity the Poor Immigrant
10. The Wicked Messenger
11. Down Along the Cove
12. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

Disc Six – Regardless
01. Something To Sing About
02. This Is How You Find the Way
03. Regardless
04. Spit And Shine
05. I Will Not Disappoint You
06. Start As We Mean to Go On
07. Punctuation
08. Love Came Looking for Me
09. This Road
10. Let It Be Known
11. My Friend Goodbye
~ Bonus tracks:
12. Regardless (Radio Mix)
13. Regardless (Radio Mix Instrumental)
14. Beautiful Day (This Is How You Find the Way)
15. Start as We Mean to Go On (Instrumental)
16. Love Came Looking for Me (Instrumental)

Disc Seven – Ghosts & Graffiti
01. Copper
02. Start As We Mean to Go On
03. This Girl is Taking Bets
04. Holding Your Hand
05. My Voice
06. London
07. Coming Back to You
08. Love Came Looking for Me
09. Inch By Inch
10. Glistening Bay
11. Sol Invictus
12. Razor Valentine
13. Old Soul
14. Live Out Loud
15. Juliet
16. Don’t Set Foot Over the Railway Track
17. Wrong With You
18. You’re The Radio
19. Inverigo
~ Bonus track:
20. Coming Back to You (Single Version)

Total Time – 390:00

MUSICIANS
Thea Gilmore – Vocals, Guitars
~ Way too many to list here

ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Cherry Red Records
Country of Origin: UK
Release Date: 31^st October 2025

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