‘Potent and pervasive’: Review of Everything But The Girl’s new album, ‘Fuse’
CLASS ACT: Everything But The Girl, whose new album Fuse is released on April 21
By Phil Ascough
That thing about people who come to Hull to study, fall in love with the place and never leave. If only it were true of Everything But The Girl.
As students at the University of Hull, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt kicked off a golden decade for music in the city but, after graduating, they left, returning only rarely and for promotional book chats more than performances of a music repertoire simultaneously enchanting and exciting, intimate and intense, tear-jerking and floor-filling.
Maybe they’ll come back on a tour for their new album. Maybe they won’t tour at all. That would be a shame but they’ve always tended to work on their own terms, placing a high priority on family and privacy. Having both turned 60 last year it doesn’t necessarily follow that the release of a first new studio album for 24 years will see the couple rushing to get on a tour bus.
Fuse, which is released on 21 April on Buzzin' Fly Records through Virgin Music Group, has already ignited calls for more with a carefully choreographed pre-release programme. A video, a few downloads, national media interviews and a Radio 2 single of the week slot with Jo Whiley. It’s a bit like savouring the aroma in Cave Street just before opening time at Watt’s one-time favourite fish and chip shop.
Just along Beverley Road is where it all started. The couple named their band after the strapline on the sign at Turners furniture store close to the junction with Spring Bank. If they’d come to Hull in the late 80s rather than at the beginning of the decade, maybe they’d have taken inspiration from the name of the new occupiers and we’d now be celebrating the new record from the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce. Or maybe not.
On graduation Thorn reportedly declined media requests to be photographed in cap and gown outside the shop with its window displays of comfy armchairs, fancy wardrobes and lavish dining suites. She wanted to keep her academic life separate from her music. But there’s still a strong case for sticking a blue plaque on the building and, from personal experience, I have no doubt that a couple of EBTG tracks would give a welcome lift to any of the Chamber’s meetings.
A debut single, a 1982 cover of Cole Porter’s Night and Day, set the style with Watt’s simple, stripped back music and Thorn’s haunting vocals. Eden, the first album recorded in 1983, displayed a bolder approach, their capabilities and confidence clearly enhanced by a series of successful solo projects and collaborations.
Eden’s release in 1984 confirmed a talent for gentle, well-crafted pop songs wrapped up in a set of smoky, jazzy numbers. It was an approach which became the band’s hallmark, however much other influences were introduced during the last 40 years.
It’s a sign of the pair’s calibre and class that the subtleties of their work shine through such a wide variety of styles and formats.
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, their delightful 1986 album, brought together ballads, big band pop arrangements and even a twang of country. Their 1988 cover of I Don’t Want To Talk About It, written by Danny Whitten and faithful to the 1977 hit for Rod Stewart, brought a wider audience and chart success.
That was emulated somewhat inadvertently in 1995 by Missing. The understated original version from the Amplified Heart album suddenly emerged as an upbeat dancefloor classic and top three hit after a bouncing remix by Todd Terry.
In between there was Protection, the 1994 album by Massive Attack which found Thorn’s soft yet soaring vocals stealing the starring role in a magnificent, memorable title track.
So what to expect from Fuse? Well one big question from the first new Everything But The Girl album this century is how the 60-year-old Thorn’s famously sublime singing stacks up against the standards which she set throughout the band’s acclaimed archive.
The 10-song set hasn’t exactly been rushed out since Watt and Thorn completed the writing and production duties in 2022, but maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise given the passage of time since Temperamental in 1999 and the volume of solo musical and literary projects in the interim.
Thorn said: “After so much time apart professionally, there was both a friction and a natural spark in the studio when we began. However much we underplayed it at the start, it was like a fuse had been lit. And it ended in a kind of coalescence, an emotional fusion. It felt very real and alive.”
Watt added: “It was exciting. A natural dynamism developed. We spoke in short-hand, and little looks, and co-wrote instinctively. It became more than the sum of our two selves. It just became Everything But The Girl on its own.”
The album is billed as a modern take on the electronic soul of the band’s work from the mid-90s and it hits the spot from the outset with the pulsating pop of Nothing Left To Lose picking up where Missing left off.
“I’m here at your door and I’ve been here before” from the new album shows a bit more persistence and reluctance to let go compared with the 1994 offering “I’m walking down the street again and past your door…”
Run a Red Light is more pedestrian, piano-led, typically atmospheric and simply gorgeous. It’s easy to see why Jo Whiley loves it so much. Caution to the Wind does what it says, starting slowly and gathering pace en route to something which is only a remix or two from a dancefloor anthem.
According to media interviews When You Mess Up is all about those difficult conversations parents have as their kids approach adulthood. If you’ve been there you’ll get the relevance of “I hate people who give me advice” and “you seem too young again”.
Time and Time Again is in similar territory – blurring the lines between helping your kids grow up and recalling your own experiences of years before. Lost is almost a list of bereavement, maybe about Covid or just the passage of time.
Covid was a particular challenge for the couple with Watt, considered more vulnerable as a result of his struggle in 1992 with a rare autoimmune condition, living in the same house as his family but shielding from them. So there may be various reasons for the band’s low profile over recent years, not least their various solo projects in music and literature, but there shouldn’t be any doubts about demand and desire among audiences.
Thorn told The Guardian in 2012 that the various compilations albums would not be a preamble to another tour: “The thought of strapping a guitar on again and playing all those songs from the past really does full me with cold dread.”
Will she take a different view about an album of brand new material? Certainly Thorn’s vocals aren’t the same. Why would they be 24 years on? She anticipated scrutiny of the subject during a live Q&A via the @EBTG Twitter account.
“The older I get the more I listen to Nina Simone to think about how to sing. She’s such a great example of not getting hung up on your voice always sounding *beautiful* - that conveying the song is what’s important.
“My voice has changed and deepened, as all voices do with the passing of time, and I am really enjoying that - new notes at the bottom of my range, and a little more roughness around the edges. I try to think, How would Nina Simone sing it?”
But from day one, recording Night and Day as a teenager, Thorn stood out for a vocal style displaying a maturity which belied her years. Fuse though does reveal a greater depth and character, still a smoothness but with Thorn also finding new levels and modifying her vocal range in line with her evolving capabilities.
It’s an essential part of a performer’s staying power and pretty much what Bob Dylan demonstrated when he arrived at the Bonus Arena last October. We reported then how Dylan’s gig-management techniques were adding durability to his versatility. Some do it better than others, and I’m not sure there’s any better than Thorn.
The musical arrangements have also progressed from sparse to sometimes spectacular but with Fuse the electronica is reined in considerably compared to Temperamental. From the guitars, keyboards and barely-used drums of the early years to the gadgets and gizmos of the1990s, everything plays second fiddle to Thorne’s velvet voice.
This result is a collection much easier on the ear than the previous release, although Thorn suggests the final product might, to a degree at least, have been left to chance: “Ironically the finished sound of the new album was the last thing on our mind when we started in March 2021. Of course, we were aware of the pressures of such a long-awaited comeback, so we tried to begin instead in a spirit of open-minded playfulness, uncertain of the direction, receptive to invention.”
What happens next is anybody’s guess but the fresh starting point is a triumphant new album which rewards repeated playing. Fuse is potent and pervasive, something to shout about and potentially a platform for a brilliant live show. Hull awaits.