Everything But The Girl – Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn – haven’t released a new album since 1999’s Temperamental
By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent
Twenty-four years after their last record, Everything But The Girl are back. But even they weren’t sure it was a good idea.
The band built a dedicated following in the 80s for their sophisticated, delicate jazz-pop. An unexpected detour into trip-hop and drum and bass changed their career in the 90s, with a Todd Terry remix of their single Missing becoming a major international hit.
When the band split up in 1999, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt didn’t. A couple since they met at the University of Hull in 1982, they only stepped away from the limelight in order to raise a family.
With three kids, including twin girls, the couple took turns at parenting, allowing each other space to pursue solo careers.
Watt became a DJ, producer, and owner of the deep house record label Buzzin’ Fly, while making three folksy albums under the name North Marine Drive.
Once the kids reached school age, Thorn went back to the studio, releasing four critically-acclaimed albums, while carving out a second career as a writer, most notably in her frank and funny memoir Bedsit Disco Queen.
All along, the children were cheerfully oblivious to their parents’ past lives.
“We underplayed our careers when they were growing up,” says Watt. “I think we tried once, when our girls were about six, showing them a video of us on Top of the Pops. We thought they’d be really impressed and they just both burst into tears and wanted it turned off. It was too alien for them.”
Everything But The Girl play an exclusive three-track session for BBC 6 Music
The idea of working together again only surfaced because of the pandemic. Watt, in particular, was housebound and even isolated from the rest of his family, due to the rare auto-immune disease Churg-Strauss syndrome.
“We had quite a strict lockdown because of Ben’s health issues,” says Thorn. “So, as we were coming out of it last winter, there was a definite feeling of, ‘Are we going to go back to what we were doing before, or is this actually a moment to do something different?'”
Even so, “there were lots of false starts”, continues Watt, “with Tracey egging me on to commit and me not being sure.”
“Then, one random night at the kitchen table, I just said, ‘Screw it. I’ve got a few sketches on my phone.'”
Apprehensively, he played a few “piano improvisations and ambient assemblages” he’d recorded at home. “And Tracey just said, ‘Well, I like four of those’.”
Early demos were recorded under the name TREN – Tracey and Ben – as they tiptoed their way back into a creative relationship.
“There was definitely anxiety about how it was going to work,” Watt admits. “The period that we’d been solo was longer than the period we were in Everything But The Girl and I wondered if we might clash. But actually, the opposite happened. As soon as we started working, we fell back into a common language.
“And, actually, being able to share the decision-making was really liberating. We didn’t have to come up with everything ourselves. We would share half-written lyrics, fragments of music. It was very freeing.”
Image source, Getty Images
Pictured at the start of their career, in 1982, in Richmond-upon-Thames, West London
For months, the music was confined to the four walls of the couple’s house.
“I did a lot of work just sitting on the sofa, watching the TV, tinkering around and coming up with ideas.” says Watt.
It was only when they hired a recording studio near Bath that they finally confronted reality.
“On the first day, when Tracey put up a proper vocal microphone, and we heard it back on the proper speakers, it suddenly became Everything But The Girl,” says Watt. “And I think we had two choices at that point. We either were going to run a mile, or we were going to rise to the occasion.”
“It definitely forced us to up our game, to be a bit more musically ambitious,” says Thorn.
“If you’re going to finish a record, you have to summon up a lot of commitment and confidence and go, ‘Right. come on. We’re doing this properly’.”
The result is Fuse, an album that’s simultaneously familiar and fresh, honouring the band’s classic sound without simply replicating it.
Modern touches of 2-step, sub-bass and auto-tune embellish songs that address distinctly adult concerns: Thwarted ambitions, losing touch with old friends, 21st Century malaise, and a constant, aching desire for human connection.
“Kiss me while the world decays,” Thorn exclaims at the climax of the single, Nothing Left to Lose.
“We didn’t really notice those ideas in the lyrics until after we’d finished,” says Thorn.
“There are lots of recurring themes of desperately trying to connect with people and then [there are] dreamlike lyrics of being out in a club or in a bar. All this stuff bubbled up from those periods of isolation, where we just weren’t allowed to do the things we loved for a long period of time.”
Image source, Ward Bishop
The duo’s hits include Each And Every One, Missing, Wrong and Walking Wounded
On the ghostly, compassionate When You Mess Up, Thorn offers up some well-worn advice: “In a world of micro-aggression/ Little human transgressions/ Forgive yourself… Have a cigarette/ Don’t think you’re inappropriate.”
Some critics have interpreted the lyric as the musician giving advice to her children – but it’s actually a dialogue with herself.
“A couple of years ago when I wrote it, I was coming to that phase of the kids having left home and approaching 60. I was thinking, ‘Okay, what’s the next bit of my life going to be?’ And it reminded me of being young. You know, that difficulty you can have in your late teens, early 20s, when you’re trying to work out your identity and what you want from life.”
The lyrics presented an opportunity to try something the duo had always wanted to do: Scuff up one of the most affecting and recognisable voices in British pop.
“There’s a couple of moments when Tracey’ goes into this devilish, horror film version of her voice and it’s like the mad voices in her head just talking to her,” says Watt.
“We’ve never done anything like that before but the technology now exists to manipulate the human voice in many different ways. Frank Ocean uses it really well, Kendrick Lamar uses it really well. There’s a lot of people who turn their nose up at auto-tune, they think you’re somehow not being authentic. But I just think that it’s crazy to restrict yourself.”
Auto-tune aside, fans will notice that Thorn’s voice has deepened and roughened. It’s a change that adds even more emotional weight to her lyrics – and one she’s happy to explore.
“On the last solo album I made, I was becoming very aware of, ‘Wow, I’ve got a couple of extra notes down here at the bottom’,” she says.
“But that’s good! As a musician, you always want something new to work with, a slightly different colour. So, I found the idea of it beginning to subtly change really exciting.”
The music mirrors that, says Watt, using unresolved chords and suspended notes to create a murky, unsettled atmosphere.
“Some of the piano voicings are quite dissonant in a classical music sense,” he says, “and I encouraged Tracy to land on these slightly broken notes in the melody. It suits our lyrics, which are often full of mixed feelings and ambivalence.”
The band, pictured here on Top Of The Pops, played their last ever show at the Montreux Festival in 2000
Released on Friday, the album has already won a clutch of four and five-star reviews. The Guardian called it “a comeback worth waiting for“, while Rolling Stone praised the duo’s creative risk-taking: “The only thing predictable about Fuse is how strong the songs are,” wrote Rob Sheffield.
The album’s closing track, Karaoke, addresses Thorn’s ambivalence about live performance. As she declared in the opening chapter of her second memoir, Naked At The Albert Hall: “I don’t do nostalgia gigs. And by that, I don’t mean I don’t perform them, I mean I don’t attend them either. I don’t believe in them.”
So is it safe to say that, aside from an exclusive session on BBC 6 Music, the band won’t be touring alongside the new record?
“The idea of playing the old songs every night doesn’t appeal to us,” she confirms. “Pop audiences want to hear the songs as they’re recorded. They’re not big on you deconstructing or ripping [things] apart.
“We understand that, but the thought of doing the same thing night after night and then getting on the bus and driving to the next place? It doesn’t excite me.”
As for the future, the band aren’t sure whether Fuse is a one-off, or a new beginning.
“We’re deliberately not thinking about that,” says Thorn.
“We didn’t think there was going to be another Everything But The Girl record for quite a long time – and now that there is, we’re just trying to enjoy it.”
