Today ‘Fuse’ entered the UK Album Chart at No 3. Ben and Tracey said on social media: “We are thrilled. Our highest EVER chart position. We didn’t know what to expect when we made it. A leap of faith after all this time. Thanks to EVERYONE who has supported it. It’s been quite the ride. Here’s to the future đ„đâ€ïž”
Yesterday Everything But The Girl released its new album, Fuse. The response has been incredible from both fans and media. Ben and Tracey would like to thank everyone who has supported this project. Highlights have included a string of high-profile reviews and comments (âStill staking out popâs frontier after 40 years. It is audibly made by people with a deep love for and understanding of the music theyâre inspired by ⊠a comeback worth waiting for.â â â â â â – GUARDIAN; âTriumphant new album ⊠bewitching and soul-baringâ – PITCHFORK; âHow reunion albums should be done ⊠the blueprint for any alt-leaning electronic act in the pop space ⊠proves how big an impact their music has made on the landscape that has followedâ â â â â – NME) and a wave of acclaim from fans across social media.
The album is available on coloured vinyl, black vinyl, CD, BluRay (HD audio and Dolby Atmos) and stream. Still need a copy? Go here.
Everything But The Girl have released their brand-new single ‘Run A Red Light’. It’s the third upfront track to be taken from their new album ‘Fuse’, due out next month, and arrives with an accompanying video, directed by Charlie Di Placido, who made the recent ‘Nothing Left To Lose’ video (watched over 1 million times on YouTube). There is also a new photo (above) by Edward Bishop.
“I met a lot of characters during my years in clubland,” says Ben of ‘Run A Red Light’, “and I wrote this song about the guy at the end of the night, who dreams his big moment is just around the corner. All the bravado and good intentions masking the vulnerability.”
“The video is like a dream of the story,” says Tracey. “We’ve found with this record that choreography can express the emotion in our music without having to be too literal. The characters, the clothes, the movement, the direction all just fit. Charlie and his team really get the feelings we’re going for.”
Everything But The Girl have today confirmed details of Fuse, their first new studio album in 24 years, out on 21st April. You can pre-order the album and merchandise now.
The first single – and opening cut from the 10-track album – is Nothing Left To Lose, accompanied by a video from director Charlie Di Placido (Kojey Radical, Jungle).
Written and produced by Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn over the spring-summer of 2021, Fuse is a modern take on the lustrous electronic soul the band first pioneered in the mid-90s. Thorn’s affecting and richly-textured voice is once again up front in Watt’s glimmering landscape of sub-bass, sharp beats, half-lit synths and empty space, and as before, the result is the sound of a band comfortable with being both sonically contemporary, yet agelessly themselves.
Speaking about the bandâs re-emergence and new album, Tracey says:
âIronically 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’.
The pair recorded in secret at home and in a small riverside studio outside Bath with friend and engineer Bruno Ellingham. For the first two months, the artist name on the album files was simply TREN (Tracey and Ben), and early takes focussed on ambient sound montages and improvised spectral piano loops recorded by Ben on his iPhone at home during his enforced pandemic isolation – ideas which later blossomed into atmospheric tracks such as When You Mess Up and Interior Space.
Yet, as confidence grew, so did the pulse and rhythm of the album, culminating in the writing and programming of later songs, such as the new single Nothing Left To Lose and Caution To The Wind. Shot through with alternating hope, desperation and vivid flashbacks, the album’s lyrics – sometimes allusive, sometimes richly detailed, capture what it’s like to start again.
Ben explains: âIt 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 ownâ.
The duo’s renewed studio partnership also led to the new album title. âAfter so much time apart professionally, there was both a friction and a natural spark in the studio when we beganâ, says Tracey. âHowever 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 aliveâ.
Everything But The Girl broke through on the UK indie scene in 1982 with a stark jazz-folk cover of Cole Porter’s Night and Day. They then released a string of UK gold albums throughout the 80s, experimenting with jazz, guitar pop, orchestral wall-of-sound and drum-machine soul. After Watt’s near-death experience from a rare auto-immune condition in 1992, the pair returned unbowed with the million-selling ardent folktronica of Amplified Heart in 1994. It includes their biggest hit, Missing, after New York DJ-producer Todd Terryâs remix unexpectedly made the leap from heavy club play to global radio success (Number 2 US Hot 100; Number 3 UK Top 40). The sparkling Walking Wounded – emotional songs brimming with ideas from the mid 90s electronic scene – followed in 1996 (Number 4 UK Album Chart). Spawning four UK Top 40 hits, the record became the bandâs first platinum selling album. After their final show at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2000, the pair chose to quit Everything But The Girl on a high.
The intervening years have of course been anything but empty. From 2007 Tracey released four solo albums, a movie soundtrack for Carol Morley’s The Falling, four non-fiction books and wrote extensively for The New Statesman. Ben became an international DJ and remixer, and ran his electronic label Buzzin’ Fly for ten years before returning to his singer-songwriter roots with a trilogy of solo albums from 2014-2020.
Everything But The Girlâs new album Fuse is released on 21st April on Buzzin’ Fly Records through Virgin Music Group, except North America, where it is released on Buzzin’ Fly Records through Verve
Get ready for the kiss đ on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
A kiss to wish you all a Happy New Year. It has been a big year for us, bringing us back together to record an album for the first time in 23 years. We never imagined at the start of 2022 that this would happen, and yet here we are. Go well into the new year all of you, we look forward to sharing our music in 2023. The next thing you see from us will be something new.Â
With much love from Ben and Tracey x
Pic: Juergen Teller, 1999
Good news, everyone. We are still on track for the new EBTG album release in the spring. And weâll have a first single to share with you in January.
(Behind the scenes pic of last weekâs photo shoot by Tracey)
This, and other vintage pics and stories now at instagram.com/ebtgofficial
This week Ben and Tracey quietly announced on social media that they have made a new album due for release next spring. It will be their first for 24 years. They also launched a new Instagram account and posted this previously unseen photo from 1995 by Marcelo Krasilcic. No more details are available at the moment. More news soon.
Everything But The Girl’s best-selling debut album, ‘Eden’ is the latest re-release from the duo to benefit from half-speed remastering at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell, and a fresh 180gm vinyl pressing. Out on Sep 17 2021, it can be pre-ordered now.
Originally released in May 1984, the album spent almost six months on the official UK album chart peaking at number 14 and spawned the UK Top 40 hit, Each and Every One. The label wanted further singles but the duo preferred the album to grow by word of mouth. ‘Eden’ achieved gold album status in the UK and has gone on to sell more than 500,000 copies worldwide.
Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn met at the University of Hull in 1981. They formed Everything But The Girl initially as a side-project, as both had already established themselves on the UK independent music scene as teenagers  – Tracey with her lo-fi minimal girl group, Marine Girls; Ben as a young guitarist and singer-songwriter, collaborating with alt-folk icon Robert Wyatt on his debut EP.
In the summer of 1983 the pair – having each released debut solo albums – decided to pool their new songs for ‘Eden’. It was recorded with producer Robin Millar (chosen for his work with Weekend and The Pale Fountains) at his Power Plant Studios in Willesden, North West London.
“All the songs were written on guitar in Hull in early 1983. We were living in one room with a shared kitchen on Pearson Park,” recalls Tracey. “Power Plant seemed very glamorous by comparison. Sade was recording downstairs. We were upstairs.”
The sessions featured a band handpicked by Ben and Tracey: Working Week’s Simon Booth on second guitar, This Heatâs Charles Hayward on drums, and South American musicians Chucho Merchan (double bass) and Bosco DâOliveira (percussion) plus a clutch of top horn players from the English jazz scene. The line-up was part friends from London, part musicians Ben admired from trips to the Bull’s Head jazz room with his dad when growing up, in particular Peter King (alto sax).
“We were intent on being non-rock,” says Ben. “No clichĂ©s. No snare drums, no solid body electric guitars or electric bass. We wanted soft horns, Gretsch guitars, no fuss, a lightness of touch. We were into pop, latin, torch songs, sharp lyrics.”
The album was released on the newly-formed imprint Blanco Y Negro (co-run by Mike Alway and Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis) through Warner, and signalled Everything But The Girlâs move from an independent – Cherry Red – to a major label.
Eden’s artwork – by Marine Girls band member Jane Fox – was delivered as a three-dimensional collage of hand-drawn art and torn paper. Warner (who were marketing and distributing the record) didnât really know what to do with it. The original version didnât even have the name of the band on it. In the end it was photographed and printed on âreverse-board stockâ – unusual for a major release at the time.
Eden (2021 Vinyl Reissue) is released on 17 September 2021 on Buzzin’ Fly Records, under exclusive license to Chrysalis Recordings.
In case you missed it, Ben has just released ‘Storm Shelter’, a 6-track mini-album and companion piece to his 2020 studio album ‘Storm Damage’, to stream or download.
Recorded during rehearsals for the Storm Damage Tour in January 2020, it is a stripped-back piano-and-vocals set that was due for release last year, before it was held up by pandemic-related postponements and the ultimate cancellation of all his shows.
It contains two covers and four of his songs. The covers, Ten Cityâs house classic ‘Thatâs The Way Love Is’ and Sharon Van Ettenâs recent synth torch song ‘Comeback Kid’. The remaining recordings are new versions of three songs – ‘Balanced on a Wire’, ‘Summer Ghosts’ and ‘Sunlight Follows the Night’ – from ‘Storm Damage’, and one – ‘Winterâs Eve’ – from my 2016 album, ‘Fever Dream’.
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