Everything But The Girl Album Poll

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!

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/everything-but-the-girl-fuse/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpc2Lf9sFRQ

album's gonna be great

so good, love the repeated words at the end of each verse

omigod my favorite song yet

Predictably the album is great. They nailed it.

i'm not blown away but it's very good

waiting to listen to the latest jam until i can hear the whole album in the morning.

amplified heart and idlewild didn't blow me away initially, so that sounds about right ufo☺

first listen and i'm immediately reminded of the slowdive comeback lp in the sense that it has shades of everything i love about them, but isn't strictly reminiscent of any of their old material. redundancy: and yet, it is still undeniably them. and a lot like that slowdive, this album feels like a loving gift to people like me; a sort of "hey, thanks for sticking around."

(that said, some of this material is absolutely brutal, jfc)

agree with the anti-wow factor / not being "BLOWN AWAY" — quite comforting, in fact. right now, my highlights would be one of the singles (probably "caution to the wind" and "nothing left to lose"), but that may be because of familiarity bias. i certainly didn't expect it to be as morose as it is (and don't worry, i'm not using that word as a negative critique). they certainly came through and captured the climate of contemporary culture, once again synthesizing era-specific customs into contemporary sounds. comforting that they're just as good as ever.

also the track sequence is really good.

some of the slower burning tracks on this shook me to my core - "when you mess up," "karaoke"

yeah, in that respect "lost" can sorta fuck off.

I just noticed the distorted guitar in "Run a Red Light."

so good, love the repeated words at the end of each verse

― fleeting art that floats! (geoffreyess)

the only way you can get away with "fiat cinquecento" is to repeat it over and over again imo.

it's a delicious thing to sing

being tracy thorn also helps

ngl i'm addicted to this song

i love the synth chords at the end of the chorus

fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
his fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
fiat cinquecento
his fiat cinquecento

need an Inhuman League-style remix

Tim’s Listening Party happening now with many Ben/Tracey tweets.

okay, I'm pretty fusin' blown away

had never really listened to ebtg til this year, but they've kind of taken over my life.

when they hit, they hit hard and become an integral part of life. so much depth.