It’s just over 20 years since Thea released ‘Loft Music’, an album of covers by artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Buzzcocks, The Ramones and Neil Young. This is her second, this time predominantly just her on acoustic guitar and/or piano, and an equally eclectic collection that strips back the originals, songs she says which have been anchors in her life, to really bring out the lyrics and emotions.
They are, save for three, classics from the rock and pop genres, the first exception being the album opener, background chatter preceding a world weary and almost whispered .initially unaccompanied before ruminative acoustic guitar arrives, take on ‘Cabaret’, a complete contrast to the familiar exuberant and defiant Liza Minelli version, the line
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go, I’ll go like Elsie
almost disappearing in the last syllable.
It’s a stunning start and that standard continues with the pizzicato strings (possibly synthesised) that introduce and percolate through a wonderfully simple, bombast free and emotionally open version of Guns ‘n’ Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ before she moodily strums her way into Echo & The Bunnymen’s goth anthem ‘The Killing Moon’, taking the chorus floating into the ether with slightly ‘Sgt Pepper’ psychedelic hints to the instrumentation.
The second exception to the goes back to 1949 and, written by Carl Sigman and Bob Russell, ‘Crazy He Calls Me’, a song first recorded by Billie Holiday with Thea mirroring the romantic intoxication in her voice to a dreamily plucked guitar bluesy slow jog arrangement.
It’s back to more contemporary realms and a late night jazzy ballad guitar arrangement of Blur’s millennium angst ‘End Of A Century’ switching to tentative piano notes to capture the aching melancholic mood of The Gin Blossoms’ ‘Hey Jealousy’.
Given how often it crops up as a cover or in a live set, it’s perhaps no surprise to find her too embracing Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’, but with a metronomic rhythm and chiming notes, she pares the pacing right back while her delivery captures the despair and resignation lurking in the shadow of the lyrics. Another oft-covered number is The Velvet Underground’s blissfully narcotic ‘Sunday Morning’ here carrying over those initial chimes into steady strum, keys and shaker percussion, the brief heartbeat halt 80 seconds in strikingly effective before the tinkling piano bridge leads into the languorously strung out close.
The longest track and arguably the album highlight is her absolutely hypnotic reading of REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’, her contemplative delivery not far removed from Stipe’s but still turning it into her own bruised heart lullaby. Then, again slowing down the pace, the most recent of the choices comes with a gorgeous interpretation of Miley Cyrus’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ where the touchstone for her version might well be Joan Baez.
It ends with that third from a much older era, ‘Tonight You Belong To Me’ written in 1926 and recorded crooner style by Gene Austin, though the version here takes its cue from the 1956 revival by American teenage sister duo Patience and Prudence, Thea’s vocals rather deeper and huskier but the strumalong cowboy campfire setting echoing their twee old time country accompaniment.
A masterful songwriter herself, this album again underscores her empathy in both interpreting the music of others and investing it with her own distinctive stamp. You need friends like these.