Following 2017's
The Counterweight, her third straight U.K. Top 40 album, by two years, Small World Turning marks
Thea Gilmore's return to self-releasing (via her own Shameless Records) for the first time in nearly 20 years. Like
The Counterweight, Small World Turning is concerned with politics and the state of the world; unlike her previous album, it's populated with traditional folk instruments like fiddle, banjo, and mandolin. Though not strictly acoustic, it slides into a more organic, if often lushly arranged pop. The album opens with the a cappella "Mockingbird," a brief segment of the traditional lullaby "Hush, Little Baby," before settling into the full-band "Cutteslowe Walls." Referring to walls that stood in mid-20th century Oxford to block slums from the view of wealthier homeowners, its lyrics refer to food banks and dead-end streets as well the irony of the neighborhood poor helping to build the walls, for need of employment. Later, the ballad "Don't Dim Your Light for Anyone," while ultimately encouraging, opens with the lines "The world is fierce, it's hard as nails/When you do good, the goodness fails." That song's arrangement includes acoustic guitar, light drums, piano by folk musician
Seth Lakeman, and a whistle solo by Celtic folk singer
Cara Dillon. While much of the 12-track set is similarly somber and gently pleading, exceptions include lead single "Glory," "Shake Off Those Chains," the bouncy fiddle, banjo, and percussion tune "The Revisionist," and the album's brightest track, "The Fuse (Let It All Come Down)." A whistling, toe-tapping entry with a wall of strummed instruments, rhythm piano, and an anthemic chorus replete with backing singers and horns, it acknowledges music itself as a coping mechanism ("Need the music/Strike up, pull me through this/Gimme those notes to climb inside"). Small World Turning ultimately closes as it opens, with a lullaby. A spare organ track, "Dreamers," poignantly imagines a place with bluer skies and open arms. ~ Marcy Donelson