The presence on Ghosts & Graffiti of strong new songs such as Inch By Inch and single Coming Back to You suggest that Thea Gilmore is not short of ideas. Yet much of the album consists of rerecordings of crowdpleasers from her 17-year back catalogue. These new versions do justice to the songs but they’re not radical reworkings – in some cases, as with London and Start as We Mean to Go On, they are indistinguishable from the originals. But Gilmore sees songs as evolving entities, and a singer who has set Sandy Denny’s lyrics to her own music and covered Bob Dylan’s entire John Wesley Harding album is not likely to be reverentially precious about earlier recordings. Her duets with Joan Baez (in particular), John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, the Waterboys, I Am Kloot, Joan As Police Woman and King Creosote are all undeniable pleasures, and indicate well the singer-songwriter lineage into which Gilmore fits.
