The unlikely (but welcome) return of Everything But The Girl

Twenty-four years aft their past record, Everything But The Girl are back. But adjacent they weren't definite it was a bully idea.

The set built a dedicated pursuing successful the 80s for their sophisticated, delicate jazz-pop. An unexpected detour into trip-hop and drum and bass changed their vocation successful the 90s, with a Todd Terry remix of their azygous Missing becoming a large planetary hit.

When the set divided up successful 1999, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt didn't. A mates since they met astatine the University of Hull successful 1982, they lone stepped distant from the limelight successful bid to rise a family.

With 3 kids, including duplicate girls, the mates took turns astatine parenting, allowing each different abstraction to prosecute solo careers.

Watt became a DJ, producer, and proprietor of the heavy location grounds statement Buzzin' Fly, portion making 3 folksy albums nether the sanction North Marine Drive.

Once the kids reached schoolhouse age, Thorn went backmost to the studio, releasing 4 critically-acclaimed albums, portion carving retired a 2nd vocation arsenic a writer, astir notably successful her frank and comic memoir Bedsit Disco Queen.

All along, the children were cheerfully oblivious to their parents' past lives.

"We underplayed our careers erstwhile they were increasing up," says Watt. "I deliberation we tried once, erstwhile our girls were astir six, showing them a video of america connected Top of the Pops. We thought they'd beryllium truly impressed and they conscionable some burst into tears and wanted it turned off. It was excessively alien for them."

The thought of moving unneurotic again lone surfaced due to the fact that of the pandemic. Watt, successful particular, was housebound and adjacent isolated from the remainder of his family, owed to the uncommon auto-immune illness Churg-Strauss syndrome.

"We had rather a strict lockdown due to the fact that of Ben's wellness issues," says Thorn. "So, arsenic we were coming retired of it past winter, determination was a definite feeling of, 'Are we going to spell backmost to what we were doing before, oregon is this really a infinitesimal to bash thing different?'"

Even so, "there were tons of mendacious starts", continues Watt, "with Tracey egging maine connected to perpetrate and maine not being sure."

"Then, 1 random nighttime astatine the room table, I conscionable said, 'Screw it. I've got a fewer sketches connected my phone.'"

Apprehensively, helium played a fewer "piano improvisations and ambient assemblages" he'd recorded astatine home. "And Tracey conscionable said, 'Well, I similar 4 of those'."

Early demos were recorded nether the sanction TREN - Tracey and Ben - arsenic they tiptoed their mode backmost into a originative relationship.

"There was decidedly anxiousness astir however it was going to work," Watt admits. "The play that we'd been solo was longer than the play we were successful Everything But The Girl and I wondered if we mightiness clash. But actually, the other happened. As soon arsenic we started working, we fell backmost into a communal language.

"And, actually, being capable to stock the decision-making was truly liberating. We didn't person to travel up with everything ourselves. We would stock half-written lyrics, fragments of music. It was precise freeing."

For months, the euphony was confined to the 4 walls of the couple's house.

"I did a batch of enactment conscionable sitting connected the sofa, watching the TV, tinkering astir and coming up with ideas." says Watt.

It was lone erstwhile they hired a signaling workplace adjacent Bath that they yet confronted reality.

"On the archetypal day, erstwhile Tracey enactment up a due vocal microphone, and we heard it backmost connected the due speakers, it abruptly became Everything But The Girl," says Watt. "And I deliberation we had 2 choices astatine that point. We either were going to tally a mile, oregon we were going to emergence to the occasion."

"It decidedly forced america to up our game, to beryllium a spot much musically ambitious," says Thorn.

"If you're going to decorativeness a record, you person to summon up a batch of committedness and assurance and go, 'Right. travel on. We're doing this properly'."

The effect is Fuse, an medium that's simultaneously acquainted and fresh, honouring the band's classical dependable without simply replicating it.

Modern touches of 2-step, sub-bass and auto-tune embellish songs that code distinctly big concerns: Thwarted ambitions, losing interaction with aged friends, 21st Century malaise, and a constant, aching tendency for quality connection.

"Kiss maine portion the satellite decays," Thorn exclaims astatine the climax of the single, Nothing Left to Lose.

"We didn't truly announcement those ideas successful the lyrics until aft we'd finished," says Thorn.

"There are tons of recurring themes of desperately trying to link with radical and past [there are] dreamlike lyrics of being retired successful a nine oregon successful a bar. All this worldly bubbled up from those periods of isolation, wherever we conscionable weren't allowed to bash the things we loved for a agelong play of time."

On the ghostly, compassionate When You Mess Up, Thorn offers up immoderate well-worn advice: "In a satellite of micro-aggression/ Little quality transgressions/ Forgive yourself… Have a cigarette/ Don't deliberation you're inappropriate."

Some critics person interpreted the lyric arsenic the instrumentalist giving proposal to her children - but it's really a dialog with herself.

"A mates of years agone erstwhile I wrote it, I was coming to that signifier of the kids having near location and approaching 60. I was thinking, 'Okay, what's the adjacent spot of my beingness going to be?' And it reminded maine of being young. You know, that trouble you tin person successful your precocious teens, aboriginal 20s, erstwhile you're trying to enactment retired your individuality and what you privation from life."

The lyrics presented an accidental to effort thing the duo had ever wanted to do: Scuff up 1 of the astir affecting and recognisable voices successful British pop.

"There's a mates of moments erstwhile Tracey' goes into this devilish, fearfulness movie mentation of her dependable and it's similar the huffy voices successful her caput conscionable talking to her," says Watt.

"We've ne'er done thing similar that earlier but the exertion present exists to manipulate the quality dependable successful galore antithetic ways. Frank Ocean uses it truly well, Kendrick Lamar uses it truly well. There's a batch of radical who crook their chemoreceptor up astatine auto-tune, they deliberation you're someway not being authentic. But I conscionable deliberation that it's brainsick to restrict yourself."

Auto-tune aside, fans volition announcement that Thorn's dependable has deepened and roughened. It's a alteration that adds adjacent much affectional value to her lyrics - and 1 she's blessed to explore.

"On the past solo medium I made, I was becoming precise alert of, 'Wow, I've got a mates of other notes down present astatine the bottom'," she says.

"But that's good! As a musician, you ever privation thing caller to enactment with, a somewhat antithetic colour. So, I recovered the thought of it opening to subtly alteration truly exciting."

The euphony mirrors that, says Watt, utilizing unresolved chords and suspended notes to make a murky, unsettled atmosphere.

"Some of the soft voicings are rather dissonant successful a classical euphony sense," helium says, "and I encouraged Tracy to onshore connected these somewhat breached notes successful the melody. It suits our lyrics, which are often afloat of mixed feelings and ambivalence."

Released connected Friday, the medium has already won a clutch of 4 and five-star reviews. The Guardian called it "a comeback worthy waiting for", portion Rolling Stone praised the duo's originative risk-taking: "The lone happening predictable astir Fuse is however beardown the songs are," wrote Rob Sheffield.

The album's closing track, Karaoke, addresses Thorn's ambivalence astir unrecorded performance. As she declared successful the opening section of her 2nd memoir, Naked At The Albert Hall: "I don't bash nostalgia gigs. And by that, I don't mean I don't execute them, I mean I don't be them either. I don't judge successful them."

"The thought of playing the aged songs each nighttime doesn't entreaty to us," she confirms. "Pop audiences privation to perceive the songs arsenic they're recorded. They're not large connected you deconstructing oregon ripping [things] apart.

"We recognize that, but the thought of doing the aforesaid happening nighttime aft nighttime and past getting connected the autobus and driving to the adjacent place? It doesn't excite me."

As for the future, the set aren't definite whether Fuse is simply a one-off, oregon a caller beginning.

"We're deliberately not reasoning astir that," says Thorn.

"We didn't deliberation determination was going to beryllium different Everything But The Girl grounds for rather a agelong clip - and present that determination is, we're conscionable trying to bask it."