By guest blogger Joel Blechinger
For diehard Everything But the Girl fans (Everything But the Girlies?), the mere existence of their eleventh studio LP, Fuse, is a wonder. This is because it arrives nearly 24 years after their last album, “Temperamental“, and it troubles what had been the consensus that the project was complete: a fascinating ten album run spanning jazz standards, jangle rock indie, immaculately orchestrated ballads, slick early 90s blue-eyed soul, folktronica, and drum and bass, to name just a few of the directions the project went in across its first 17 years. When Tracey Thorn announced Fuse in a casual tweet in early November 2022, it seemed the unthinkable had happened: former partners in music and continual partners in life, Thorn and Ben Watt had joined together again to make the distinct type of electronic pop music that only they can make.
“Nothing Left to Lose”, the first single from Fuse, announced their return in striking sonic terms back in January, evincing how Watt had remained an admirably open and omnivorous listener to ensuing developments in U.K. electronic music since EBTG’s hiatus. In the track, thick bass wobbles around underneath an urgent vocal part from Thorn, her voice noticeably deepened and ever-so-slightly coarsened by the passage of time as she implores, “Kiss me while the world decays / Kiss me while the music plays.”
Having its genesis in an iPhone piano demo by Watt, “Run a Red Light” showcases a different side of Fuse, one that is stunningly confident in its minimalism, open to sonic experimentation, and that makes me think of what could comprise EBTG’s “late style,” something that I never thought I would have the opportunity to do. As showcased in the band’s recent Maida Vale session, the song’s hypnotic piano part, Watt’s backing and harmony vocals, and the sparse percussion track combine to build a beautiful sound bed for Thorn to soulfully emote over in character as a woefully overconfident DJ who may not realize that they may never escape a certain mid-tier nightlife scene.
Also in this second mode is the album’s most poignant, emotionally direct moment: “Lost”. In this one, Watt first sets up a repetitive, chiming synth line over a set of gauzy, cycling chords. Atop this, a weary Thorn sings a lyric she wrote, in part, by using Google search to autocomplete responses to her entered text “I lost …”: “I lost my mind last week / I lost my place / I lost my bags / I lost my biggest client / I lost my perfect job / I lost the plot / Then I just lost it”. This introduction to the contemporary topos of loss sets us up for the song’s second verse, which begins “I lost my faith / and my best friend”, before Thorn repeats “I lost my mother” three times. A seemingly cavernous pause comes between each repetition, forcing the listener to contend with the affective weight of this plainly-stated phrase sung with different texture and phrasing each time. “Lost”, as a piece of music– simultaneously narcotized, weary, and profoundly existentially bereft– is art born of the pandemic years, those isolated years where so much was lost on a world scale. Worth remembering, however, amidst the bleakness of “Lost,” is that it is pandemic isolation to which we also owe the EBTG reunion itself.
“No One Knows We’re Dancing” and “Karaoke,” two other wonderful tracks on Fuse, also serve as important counterbalances to the depths of “Lost”. “No One Knows We’re Dancing” is a song filled with artfully drawn portraits of the regulars at a Sunday afternoon dance club–Fabio, Amy, and Peter— as this collective (including the song’s narrator) is lost (in another sense of the word) together in the immediacy of shared musical transcendence: “Sweat falls off the ceiling / We’re all trapped in a feeling”. Sonically, Watt adroitly sets this scene to lovely Italo-disco accents, making it a contender for the record’s strongest dance track, though that may be a toss up between “No One Knows…” and the insistent, anthemic chorus of “Forever.”
“Karaoke”, the album’s closer, significantly also has a shared musical experience at its core: the narrator recounts a night out taking in the unique micro-moments of karaoke singing in a crowd of strangers. Someone tries some Dylan and it doesn’t go over too well, someone else goofs their way through Elvis. The regulars arrive, someone sings “Spotlight” and brings the place down. Thorn repeats her refrain “Do you sing to heal the broken hearted, or do you sing to get the party started?” treating each as a worthwhile endeavour over the course of a night. “What’s it for? / Well who knows? / You take a breath / and here it goes / You hit the highs / and own the lows / You hit the highs / and you own the lows”, goes another later part of the song, pointing out the limitations of cerebral, rational thinking when contending with the risk and thrill of embodied singing, something Thorn has written about in one of the very good books she authored during EBTG’s hiatus.
It’s fitting that Thorn and Watt single out others’ music and music as shared experience on “Fuse” as a refuge from the despondency that is showcased on “Lost”, and on other tracks such as “When You Mess Up”, and “Interior Space”. EBTG are well-established music lovers, well versed in pop music history, and keenly aware of their place in it. What is truly thrilling about “Fuse” is that we have another record from Thorn and Watt in our lives, to soundtrack our experiences of solitude and collective catharsis. Had someone told me this would’ve been the case a year ago, I would’ve been in disbelief. What is even more moving is that it is a beautiful and deep project, sonically immaculate, and well worthy of continuing the legacy of their first 17 years making music together.
STAR RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
NOTE: If you liked this article, please be sure to check out our guest blogger’s “music blog on Substack“.
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