Gig Review: Thea Gilmore - Wolverhampton Arts Centre, Wolverhampton. Wednesday 21st October 2026
Born like a tsunami
A one woman army
Took a pharmacy to calm me
Three poetic lines never tiresome to read or, especially, listen to. They convey so much literary guile. The impact is extra special in the climax of a show when song slips into the spoken word before a room-inducing communal crescendo explodes. Thea Gilmore signed off her pre-encore segment at Wolverhampton Arts Centre with the rousingly emotive ‘The Bright Service’. A fitting moment when the facets of an evening aligned.
From afar, two key developments appear to have formed the backbone of Thea Gilmore’s career over the last half a dozen years. First, the Afterlight project with its highly charged creation and presentation. Saturday 9th October 2021 permanently remains the day live music cemented its post-pandemic rebirth. Nothing prepared for me for the unveiling of Afterlight on stage in Birmingham.
Five years later, the importance of the Echo Line emerged as a key invigorator in the lengthy timespan of Thea Gilmore being an active artist. The Echo Line is where anonymous messages are left via a designated platform, phone or online, then selectively turned into songs. The current mission is to remove the permanency from recordings, a touch ironic but an attempt to bring music into the present. These random songs have a butterfly existence fluttering on The Echo Line website for a couple of weeks. In a slight shift, a couple have migrated to the live setlist with ‘Home Scar’ and ‘Silvie’ moving a Wolverhampton Arts Centre audience on a Wednesday night. Innovation thrives in Thea Gilmore’s DNA so it will be interesting how The Echo Line evolves. It seems to have served a purpose of slowing down a chaotic noisy world.
The major format shift since last playing Wolverhampton 18 months ago was the addition of an accompanying guitarist. The solo work of Philippe Nash was introduced in the support slot. His generally lo-fi delivery wasn’t in the same sphere as Gilmore’s and only an open minded tilt extracted a degree of worth. However the liaison elevated ten-fold when invited back on stage roughly a third into the main set. Whether on electric or acoustic, his guitar applied the perfect texture allowing Gilmore to freely roam at times. He remained on stage until the encore version of ‘Vespering’ closed this brief chapter.
Thea Gilmore possesses the dual gift of commanding the stage, both mid-song and in the interlude. She personalises the moment taking candidness to the edge and framing basic emotion into something relatable. Each time explained, the story behind ‘Don’t Dim Your Light Anymore’ is updated, while we had the most informative explanation to date of ‘Cutteslowe Walls’. No words were required as ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ was stripped back into a traditional folk song. Gilmore has occasionally turned to covers during her career, but this evening was largely celebrating an extensive back catalogue of original music.
The road is well-frequented place for Thea Gilmore these days. She thrives on the intimacy and the connective energy of the present. She confesses to still struggling to a find a path in the only job known, while blessed that music has been kind to her overall. Wolverhampton Arts Centre has also been kind to her twice in recent times with this evening’s sell out a testimony. She remains a fascinating artist capable of enlisting new admirers via her proactive channels alongside locked-in fans reminiscing about albums from twenty years ago. We saw someone capable of shining an optimistic light and were left wandering what happens next.
