Everything But The Girl Album Poll

i picked love not money. because it is my favorite everything but the girl album. plus, it's the only everything but the girl album that i know all the words to. which means there are REALLY scary singalong sessions at my house. unless you find the idea of a probably drunk 6 foot tall 220 pound dirtbag from the woods of connecticut singing along to everything but the girl alone and at the top of his lungs somehow endearing.

after that though: (cheating cuz i would pick thorn cherry red ep next) then eden and then baby the stars shine tonight and then idlewild and then the acoustic thing.

There ain't a damn thing here better than the first album. Never will be ever.

A lot of nice things to say about the new style on "Walking Wounded", but "Eden" is too great not to vote for. They never really managed to follow it up though, so a change in style may have been a wise move anyway.

I've never heard Eden! I guess I should.

It occurs to me Eden has a sortof Smiths-ish sound to it. I always had the U.S. version though where they swapped a few tracks with the UK version, which in hindsight is really irritating.

walking wounded or temperamental, innit?

It occurs to me Eden has a sortof Smiths-ish sound to it.

To me, it sounds much like early Aztec Camera, only with a slight jazz element added.

Eden, easily. There were so many good British jazz/pop records in 83/84 (Carmel, early Style Council, etc.) before 80s-style production and synths took over. I listened to Eden and Idlewild back-to-back not too long ago, and the later was painful in its production (except for the fantastic "Apron Strings" at the ened).

I'm very fond of Idlewild despite the production and the nice-but-not-my-thing Danny Whitten cover. Someone on the other EBTG thread rightly complimented Tracy Thorn for writing lyrics to and for other women -- these small but emphatic gestures of solidarity. "Blue Moon Rose" is in that category. And "Oxford Street" is just lovely.

I did like Walking Wounded when it came out, but just got bored of it quickly or something. It was indeed a nice new direction for them.

I mean, I say that, but what really happened was Walking Wounded was the first one I bought of them since Baby The Stars Shine Bright (not sure why it's mistitled in this poll). I heard someone rep for Amplified Heart some years ago, though. God I'd love to hear some of Baby The Stars Shine Bright again. "Don't Leave Me Behind"!!! WOW I forgot about this stuff. I need to hear "Kid" again, too. Shit I've got my work cut out for me.

Amplified Heart has sharp songs.

Oh! Also I ended up reading that Ben Watt book because some friend I had a couple years ago happened to lend it to me. I wasn't really jonesing to read it, but it was a very cool book, I was surprised.

What do you mean by sharp songs?

I am voting for Amplified Heart, though it and Walking Wounded are the only ones I know. I joined the bandwagon with "Missing" (and "Protection"). "25th December" is terrific; Richard Thompson's guitar puts chills up my spine. And "We Walk the Same Line" is excellent too.

Also I didn't mean to discount the jazzy nature of Eden when I said the album was "Smithsian". But I'm a sucker for early Style Council & Sade, so... Hell, I really wish there had been MORE of that kind of stuff going on back then.

amplified heart is close to perfect, from the songs and mood right down to each production element.

"Amplified Heart" is also up there. That is, for me "Eden" is in a league of its own, but the last three were all rather strong.

I have yet to hear #s 2 and 3 though. I would guess they might be good stuff when I love the debut.

There's one album kind of missing here, the self-titled U.S. release, with half the same songs as Eden and half different ones:
http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/100/100702.jpg

I know damnit! Don't I know it! ARRRRGH I pulled it out on LP today but still haven't downloaded the damn Eden original UK LP yet. I used to have it on cassette but never could seem to warm to the tracks on that that were missing from the U.S. release. Also I think it's worth noting that I had this U.S. version on both cassette and LP. In fact, I think I've owned the LP twice now. Just incase anyone were handing out bonus points for stuff like that.

"I have yet to hear #s 2 and 3 though. I would guess they might be good stuff when I love the debut."

wait, you've never heard love not money?????? one of the greatest albums of the 80's, geir!

That's right, Scott! "This Love Not For Sale"! I haven't heard this in fucking EONS. Thanks ILM!!!!!!

I bet that song would put goose pimples on Paul Weller's flesh with jealousy.

I voted "Eden," which is slightly different from the S/T american debut. 'easy as sin' on the american version is my favorite song of theirs. love the first two albums in general.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Yay Eden! I didn't know this poll was gonna end tonight, but ended up playing Eden on the bus today anyway. I was trying to come to a conclusion about the songs that got left off the US version and vice versa, and I still think the US version does a magnificent job of culling the most memorable tracks on the UK version, aside from "I Must Confess" & "Bittersweet". My only complaint with the US version is the tacking on "Native Land" & "Riverbed Dry" at the end. Not only are they of a lesser quality than the rest of the songs, but they have a different sound to them and feel incongruous on there. And hell, I didn't realize the lovely "Easy As Sin" didn't make it on the UK version, that's terrible! So basically you have to have both of the damn things or make sure you've downloaded all the tracks!

Temperamental -- mmmm

Baby, The Stars Shine Bright is better than I thought

would have voted 1984 s/t or Love Not Money.
favorite song: Easy As Sin

boy, is Worldwide good! It's gotten flak for its 1991-era production, but the melodies are gorgeous, the songs fully written, and Watt has never sung better on record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__auymS9OA

1988 Idlewild 0

:|

i turn to walking wounded often, also a GOAT album cover

Br@d, you'd like Worldwide if you love Idlewild: it's a Technicolor representation of that acoustic sound.

EBTG mean so much to me that should anything happen to Thorn or Watt I'd mourn them like I would Madonna or Ferry.

yeah i was gonna say my love of idlewild probably proved that i'm here for ebtg records that've gotten flak for their production, i'll check out worldwide soon

I think we now need a poll for Tracey Thorn’s THREE volumes of memoirs. She’s rivaling Peter Hook at this point

The first one is SO sharp.

i love ebtg, but worldwide is a stinker.

i would've voted idlewild.

worldwide is great. "old friends" is so good

The lack of love for Idlewild is indeed disgraceful, so:

Everything But the Girl - Idlewild (1988)

i love ebtg, but worldwide is a stinker.

i would've voted idlewild.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 11:47 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

worldwide is great. "old friends" is so good

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Heh. I was wrong:

Everything But The Girl Album Poll

1990 The Language of Life 0

:|

I've had "Frozen River" stuck in my head since August 2020.

can we talk about the language of life though???? perfectly recorded sophistipop

"Driving" and its remixes are fabulous. "The Road," "My Baby Don't Love Me," "Get Back Together" (that solo!), and "Imagining America" too. It's got some dull things that remind me of the Najee and Hiroshima-esque stuff my dad foisted on me in the car.

lol i was just about to bring up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzY01LLo3lo

i think this is my favorite EBTG album so far but in another way they're all my favorite. this just kinda nails how crisp and sharp the city looks after you walk out of a smoke-filled lounge at night

Wow this sounds great! Her voice has changed slightly - yeah a bit deeper - but I actually think it sounds better.

when her voice first hit, i have to admit i was a taken aback. it's changed a lot, even since record - but that was over 4 years ago (unbelievably!).

but she sounds absolutely beautiful on this. my god.

Perfect return. So classy and understated. Can't wait for the album.

Awesome.

I love it.

wanted to sing "tessio" over this as it played which means it's about as good as music can be

well i can't listening to anything but everything but the girl today

love that charles hayward plays drums on eden

Love the new single, it’s like the pop song each member of The XX has been trying to make for 10 years

I played their Back to Mine mix last night and when Stars All Seem To Weep came on I thought it sounded so much like EBTG, and in particular, Hatfield 1980 and the Temperamental album. I've just gone to look at the details on The Stars All Seem to Weep and it appears Ben Watt is credited with 'Beats', so yeah, explains why it sounds so much like EBTG.

New songs is fantastic, had it on repeat for about half an hour this morning.

This is a nice surprise

it's pretty good but it's funny that it sounds like what they would have made about a decade ago if they'd never gone away

Love it. Tracey’s voice has evolved. I’m not sure I would have recognized her if I just heard the “kiss me while the world decays” bit. We’ve waited 24 years but they could hurry up already with the whole album.

I'm v impressed.

I wasn't familiar with the band at all, but one week was all I needed to listen to Amplified Heart, Eden, Temperamental, and Walking Wounded. Easy quality listening. Now I have the missing link between Bossa Nova and Roisin Murphy. With a little bit of Sade too.

speaking of bossa nova: beautiful mid-90s live version of Corcovado recorded for Red Hot & Rio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA8Pv_gTjLg

approximately 30 seconds into that new single i realised this will win the '23 albums poll, and there's nothing any of us can do about it

(i like it tbf! i wouldn't have said that if i didn't)

(but it does tick every single ILM box in triplicate lol)

Saw the video for the new song. The cynic in me wants to call out EBTG for using these young people in the video, as if to conceal the fact that the artists themselves are in their seventh decade.

Shoot a fan edit and move the setting to a retirement home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEK6U2nRO24

lol are they allowed to be doing this???

LET ME IN

nice

i like it even more than "nothing left to lose" and when it gets to the reprise of "all the stars aligning, shimmering shining" ... okay, yeah. they clearly did.

Not as keen on this one so far but NLTL was great.

And I'm sittin', sittin' at the top of the stairs
And you're cryin' out on the towpath by the river
With all the swans and all the people walking by

And all of a sudden I'm stuck with an urge to unlock a door
With a key that's too big for my hands
And I drop it, and it falls at your feet
Come on, come on, it's there at your feet

and I neeeveeeerrr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo9b4buZCNo

holy shit her deepening voice suits a piano ballad as much as it does the dance tracks.

Wow that’s an awesome tune her new voice is perfect

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/10/everything-but-the-girl-on-their-unlikely-return-this-life-came-into-our-music-we-didnt-have-control-over-it

this is a good read too

On Sunday, the release date of Eden in 1984 will be as close to the end of World War II as it is to the present date.

"Run a Red Light" is fantastic. So from that Guardian article where they talk about using autotune to distort her voice, is that why it sounds so much deeper than it ever has? I don't know if I've ever heard it used to this effect.

her voice has just deepened a lot with age, it was pretty deep on her last solo album too

I was thinking her Christmas album was fairly recent but I just saw it came out a little over a decade ago.

Good interview.

3 for 3

probably gonna be the best album ever

most likely, yeah

If y'all haven't read Thorn's Bedsit Disco Queen, drop everything.

My copy of this came today ^^^.

My Rock'n'Roll Friend, her book on her friendship with Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison, is also worth reading. Guardian review here.

I'm reading Tracey Thorn's autobiography and making my way through the records as I go. I've been a casual fun up until now, with no real sense of the depth of their discography. It's been a trip and I've finally hit my sweet spot around *Baby, the Stars Shine Bright* and *The Language of Life*, both of which I'd not heard before. Both gorgeous records and available for a pittance as well.

I don't know if there is a thread for this, or if it's just me, but I never simply *trust* my taste, or never trust it alone. Maybe that's revealing too much, or, simultaneously overthinking it. Anyway, a bit of context does wonders for me; anchoring the listening in place and time seems to open up the music for me. What a band.

I don't know if that was very well explained. There are people (plenty here, for instance) who seem to know their taste so *well* and don't second-guess it, or doubt it. I admire that kind of certainty, if admire is the right word. Envy, perhaps. I'm sure people will think I'm dubious for even bringing it up.

(a) I appreciate this assumes the existence of taste as an aesthetic marker. But it seems such a given that it might as well be. b) I don't know if any of that needs to be existential but taste is one of those things, for better or worse, that seems so defining of self that see a).)

That all makes perfect sense to me.

There’s maybe two things we’re trying to capture when we talk about our taste in music, the first being what we perceive in the music and then the second being how we value it. And the two are interrelated: the more you value certain aspects of music the more readily and easily you will perceive music adopting a framework that pushes those aspects (or their lack) to the fore.

Context - things like an autobiography, or a great interview or great critical writing - can act to change both, most commonly by encouraging us to attach greater value to different things going on in the music, and occasionally by allowing us even to perceive qualities, dynamics or relationships that wouldn’t have occurred to us otherwise.

If you were to ask me “what is great music writing?” and only allow a one line answer, I would say “writing that does that persuasively and well.”

Conversely I get very sceptical of people whose assessments of music seem too pat in their certainty - to the point where even a positive assessment can end up seeming dismissive: “X has *this* value” can quickly elide into “X has (only) this value (and no other).”

Thanks for those thoughts Tim F. A lot of this was triggered by something you'd written on the 2022 tracks rollout, which articulated a bunch of stuff I've been thinking about, far better than I could. Excuse the navel gazing!

I finished the book. Thanks for the recommendation, Alfred. She's such great company and it's unlocked a whole bunch of the records for me. Jeez, this band.

Nothing Left To Lose (Four Tet Remix)

oh that's well and good, yes. quite fine. good show, kieran.

the bigger announcement today is that the extended club is back for more. oh, how i love a classic 12" mix!