"Mainstream," the first single from "Avalanche," was released with a cover mocking Barbie. The Mattel Corporation saw red and lawyered up. Ian Brown, the self-proclaimed "pig farmer-turned-indie mogul" who runs Gilmore's small label, Hungry Dog Records, said in a press release: "I've had to retract all my existing artwork and delay the release of a new disk from the hottest thing to hit the English charts since I flicked my cigarette ash on them ... At a time when America is hurling fey singer songwriters at us at a dime-a-dozen, the glory of Gilmore is ever more telling."

Gilmore refuses to be marketed as product, of course. But as you listen over and over to "Avalanche," you hear flashes of femmed-up Tom Waits. Tin Pan Alley/the Brill Building. Lots and lots of Dylan. It is like seeing the influence of "The Seven Samurai," Buster Keaton, "Singin' in the Rain" and the entire history of Hong Kong cinema in a single shot of "The Matrix." Welcome to the post-influence era.

"Post-influence era?" Gilmore repeats with a chuckle. "Post-feminist. Post-post. There are so many new next big things. It's only the old next thing. There are so many bands that are really fantastic. You go, 'Yeah yeah yeah.' They're not doing anything different. They're trading on someone else's glories in a way." We speak of the dangers of high-tech production. "You can kind of lose things in the wash," Thea says. "Daniel Lanois is almost like the next big Phil Spector -- a big wall-of-sound guy. I think there are people it works for. I think Emmylou Harris' 'Wrecking Ball' album was just extraordinary."

Because I am writing an introduction to Thea Gilmore, I have to tell you that after playing "Avalanche" along with last year's "Rules for Jokers" nonstop for several months, I can't tell which one I love the most. "Rules'" production is more delicate, and in a way more masterful. In a song called "Keep Up" (about hanging out a window over a motorway) the voices of a background choir are compressed in such a way that they sound like a squeeze box made of crucified vocal cords. "Rules" also mocks high-tech production by including a goofy musical saw on many of the cuts, as if the record was the soundtrack to a cheesy 1950s drive-in ghost movie.

Gilmore's ghostplay is more overt on the album's centerpiece, "Holding Your Hand," when she promises over and over, "I'm gonna haunt you. I'm gonna haunt you. I'm gonna haunt you." The song is as high a work of art as Henry James' entire manuscript of "Turn of the Screw."

No examination of Thea Gilmore will be complete without discussing the CD that Thea released between "Rules for Jokers" and "Avalanche." "Songs From the Gutter" is a wonderful everything-but-the-kitchen-sink record, a bit like an unplanned pregnancy. It just happened. Gilmore and her band lucked into two days of free studio time, and she wrote and recorded seven songs on the spot.

"We were recording Dylan's 'Saint Augustine' for a Dylan tribute disc," she says. "I wasn't supposed to be recording an album. The 'Augustine' track went down really quickly, so everyone went out to the pub while I started writing some lyrics down. When the band came back, I asked them to play what I'd written. It was recorded in two days. We didn't intend it to come out until the point where it was sitting on the table in front of us and we said, 'What are we going to do with this?'" The second disk of "Songs" is a collection of a dozen B-sides going all the way back to Gilmore's teenage days. The album is a monument to the gods of prolificacy.

"I'm prolific and lucky," she remarks. "If there was an act out there that was writing songs at the rate that I am, they wouldn't be allowed to release them because their record company wouldn't be open to the fact that someone would want to release more than an album every three years. I can make as many records as I want." She pauses. "If I wanted to make five a year they might sort of object. They're fantastic. They're one bloke, actually, who has a heart of gold." (That would be Ian Brown, the former pig farmer.)

As for Gilmore's first two records, the first, "Burning Dorothy" (1998), is the lost disk. Her second, "Lipstick Conspiracy" (2002), is a sophomore effort and sounds like it. Start with either "Rules for Jokers" or "Avalanche." You won't be disappointed. Then order "Songs From the Gutter." I must warn you that when you first listen to this woman-child you will be struck by her caustic lyrics (think of her as the British Elvis' kid sister). She is the cynic who thinks Bogart and Bacall mythology is bullshit: "All those movie kisses just last too long yeah ..." She's a smirking siren in all her publicity photos. Yet, as you get familiar with her music, it is Gilmore's melodic songs that begin to dominate each CD. I have walked the streets of New York for blocks, playing a particularly melodious cut from either CD over and over on my Walkman. "Hey yeah I'm going home/ With the pirate moon."

"And oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Benzedrine ... "

"There is cash on the table, here's a tapestry alphabet/ There's the moon and the tide and all the songs not written yet ... "

"I think the second half of 'Avalanche' is sweet," I tell Thea Gilmore.

"You think it's sweet?" she says, sounding incredulous.

"Yeah. The lyrics are kind of sweet. And so is your voice."

"Wow," She gasps and pauses. "I've never heard that one before." Pause. "I think I'm pleased with 'sweet.'"

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