Everything But The Girl – Fuse (Virgin) (Album Review) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Everything But The Girl last released an album two scores and four years ago. But triggered by covid lockdowns, EBTG duo Tracey Thorn and husband Ben Watt, synthesised the best and the average of the band’s historical output to create a new precipitately perfect album – Fuse, in which EBTG’s sophisti-pop sound with is further synthesised with beats based danceability.
1980’s Everything But the Girl, they were part of the god-awful sophisti-pop scene that infected new wave/post-punk, alongside acts like The Style Council, (late period) Scritti Politti, but not the brilliant The Blue Nile. But in the mid-1990s EBTG gained a new lease of life, as their pop sensibility was reengineered into danceable remixes by skilled House DJs that stormed charts, and caught the ears of even old musical curmudgeons like myself.
Fuse starts off with the teaser track Nothing Left to Lose which got people chattering (job done) a perfect nostalgia song harking back to dancefloor favourites like “Missing” and “Tracey in My Room”. Over the next three songs, the listener experiences a rollercoaster ride as ‘Run A Red Light’, a beautifully crafted pop song almost seems a stumble, when followed by the house beats of ‘Caution To The Wind’ and then the plunge comes with When You Mess Up an introspective documentation of a mid-life crisis. Later on in the album, the songs flow less aggressively, but the initial experience affects listener appreciation of later compositions like No One Knows We Are Dancing.
Fuse is a cyclic album, dare I say a two-headed hydra. There is no denying Tracy Thorn’s skillset as a writer or singer, while Ben Watt’s own skills creating the music and beats rank with earlier efforts like Temperamental from 1999. However, I think expectations were set high by Nothing Left to Lose Fuse is a perfect album purchase for survivors of the 1990’s, mature GeorgeFM listeners and GenXers wanting to recapture their youth on a Sunday in their Ponsonby villa. For the rest of us, that’s what streaming is for.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Simon Coffey
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