Everything But The Girl Album Poll

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.

can't really begin to answer the question in the poll. temperamental was my initial fav but idlewild and amplified heart both snuck up on me.

hadn't heard one of their albums before this year, but i'm impressed with how natural of a next step 'fuse' feels despite the big gap.

I've had pretty much the same experience as voodoo chili: barely listened to them, verging on ignorantly avoiding them, and now am astonished by the variety and emotional depth. At the moment, I love the mid-period from *Baby, the Stars Shine Bright* to *The Language of Life*. Been too busy to listen to the new one.

https://forumrecords.bandcamp.com/music - two live EBtG collections, no source/provenance given. The 13-track Walking Wounded set is more varied, catalog-wise. Name Your Price is a bonus.

The strength of their latest album (and particularly "Nothing Left to Lose") has spurred me to finally take this band seriously, and go on a buying spree into their back catalog.

First to arrive in the mail was "Love Not Money", and wow, this is so much better than I was expecting. I had mentally filed early-period EBTG in the same bucket as Swing Out Sister, not jangle pop with horns.
I'm still not 100% on songs with Ben on vocals, and the lyrics sometimes wander into sixth-form poetry, but it all just works together. This is gonna be fun.

Don't be rude about Swing Out Sister now or there will be a knock at the door (I totally know what you mean about underestimating/misrepresenting early EBTG, though).

The first SOS album is better than the first couple EBTG albums -- and EBTG are the better artists.

Actually I was imagining early EBTG sounding more like Kalima (bossa jazz pastiche, incongruously released on Factory records), but I thought that reference was too obscure.
(there can't be any Kalima defenders around here, can there?)

i find that people think there is a line that jazz-pop or sophistipop crossed where it becomes as unbearably cheesy as smooth jazz or whatever but ime this line is so subjective as to be practically imaginary.
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson)

I just tried the first SOS album, and it's over my line.
Maybe if I work my way up through Language of Life and Worldwide first, i'll be more open to a redrawing of the borders.

I like the Swamp Child album! Not actually made it as far as Kalima yet.

Swamp Children, ffs.

If you have trouble with SOS, prepare yourself for The Language of Life and Worldwide.

Not sure I ever checked out Kalima, but Antena also fits that description

i thought it was sad that only one person picked love not money and then i see that it was....me. good going 14 years ago scott.