Over on the Chrisf’s This week I have been listening to…… thread, @Carl has mentioned that he has been re-enjoying EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL’s back catalogue. He’s also posted some excellent tracks.
That led me to an informative article by Alexis Petridis from the Guardian. See comments.
What a remarkable duo they are. From a jazzy Hull student band to Smiths fans and ardent Red Wedgers. From being dropped by their record company to finding themselves high in the charts again thanks to Todd Terry. At the height of their success, the break came that most artists would dream of. The chance to support U2. But it was a no no for Bono. They retired and started a family.
My kind of pop stars.
EBTG albums, solo albums, collaborations, remixes…everything goes. Let’s hear about your favourites
Here’s that article.
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
and my work-in-progress playlist baws on Carl’s comments-
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
They have played a handful of gigs at The MOTH Club in Hackney earlier this year.
I was ready to go on both occasions when tickets went on sale, but despite being logged in, credit card in front of me, but both times ended up on the waiting list for returns.
I don’t suppose anyone here managed to bag a ticket?
I saw them play a few times, although I was never a huge fan of their records. They were great as an acoustic duo; this was around the time of Amplified Heart. I think I might have seen them with Dave Mattacks and Danny Thompson, too, unless I imagined that. A couple of years afterwards they discovered pop music and found their niche.
I’m not a huge fan of their music, as a group or individually, but I did enjoy Ben Watt’s book Patient when I read it many years ago. Well, if “enjoy” is the correct word to use about a book dealing with a very serious health issue and gruesome hospital stays not knowing if he would live or die…but it was well-written and touching.
The Swedish edition is very neat, on the front it has one of those white plastic cards we used as a health ID card back then, with his name and the book’s title, and instead of the personnummer, it has the ISBN number. 🙂
EDIT: to make it clear: it has an actual card in a little clear plastic pocket glued to the cover, not just a picture of one.
I’m not very up to speed with their work as EBTG. But I love Tracey’s solo albums of the last few years. Love and its Opposite in particular. And I think Tinsel and Lights is my favourite Christmas album. Her autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen is wonderful.
I’ve never been brave enough to read Ben’s book mentioned above. But his albums Hendra and Fever Dream are very good middle aged bloke albums.
Basically they do middle age very well.
I love Record – which is semi-autobiographical.
But been on the TT/EBTG train since Night and Day…
Expect @Twang to drop by any second now – he’s a huge EBTG fan and has been for yonks.
Tracey writes a really good column for New Statesman, which occasionally keeps me abreast of their musical adventures as they unfold.
You summed it up in a nutshell there @Guiri.
They definitely write songs about grown up problems.
Have you any particular favourite songs, Guiri?
@kaisfatdad You’ve hit the motherlode with that song but probably equally as good is Singles Bar. Basically anyone who’s found themselves single again in middle age and venturing out again solo for the first time in years, whether you’re male or female, could relate to the sentiment of this song.
Then from the same album and very different musically is Hormones. Imagine writing a pop song about puberty and the menopause. But it works.
On reflection I think that Love and its Opposite is one of my very favourite albums.
Maybe you should start a thread on middle aged pop?!
Hormones is one of my desert island discs, and Love and its Opposite really needs a half-speed mastered vinyl release.
Idlewild is a special one for me. Despite its offensively Eighties production, it’s a lovely set of well-crafted songs that all sort of belong together.
To expand on that; it’s a Saturday morning in a tiny flat, two years out of University, thinking maybe you’ll go round the market and the record shops later, and someone turns up at the door unannounced, and it’s instant coffee, Hobnobs, and this. They say “What’s this?” and you say “It’s Everything But The Girl’ and she says “Shit name.” Later there will be something going on, somewhere, you just don’t know what it is yet.
Snuskhummer.
Well yeah but
That is a wonderful story, @chiz.
And the way in which it triggered @Gary to launch into a spontaneous. Nordic profanity…. I’m lost for words.
The world of pop is full of strange bedfelllows. Tracey’s fling with the Bristolians from Massive Attack was unexpected but led to a track that was a career high for both of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_(Massive_Attack_song)
Not to mention an award-winning video by Michel Gondry.
Gary just wishes he’d been there
That is such an extraordinary video. Thanks for digging it out
I never got Everything But The Girl – it was all a bit studenty, and designed fo those who wear black polo neck jumpers with aspirations of French philosophers.
But … Ben Watt’s solo albums Hendra and Fever Dream proved just what a short-sighted prejudiced fool I can be.
(Still don’t get EBTG though)
Some Things Don’t Matter is one of my all-time favourite songs. The moment where his voice blends into the alto sax is magical.
And yet I wasn’t a student wearing black polo necks and didn’t care about French philosophers when I discovered them. The same can be said for my wife and in the audiences at the various gigs we attended your stereotype would have been conspicuous by their absence.
I just stumbled across this soundtrack ep.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/18/listen-to-a-track-from-tracey-thorns-songs-from-the-falling-score
Rather appealing,
Here”s a Working Week gem from the Red Wedge era. Tracey with Robert Wyatt and Claudia Figueroa.
–
Tracey’s wiki page i an interesting read. It lists all the different artists she has worked with.
Here are a few..
Jens Lekman – doing a Magnetic Fields cover.
Tiefschwarz
John Grant
That Magnetic Fields cover is worth a look just for the cakes alone.
As a great fan of Jens Lekman, I was curious where that track came from, Lando.
The answer is a 2009 sampler celebrating 20 years of Merge Records
https://www.discogs.com/release/2130900-Various-Score-20-Years-Of-Merge-Records-The-Covers?srsltid=AfmBOoqbKhqouYrEOVRak-G5MNTpJz_RSnPrLpYRfp3q29X9R86GBRim
It all looks rather interesting.
LAURA CANTRELL SINGS LAMBCHOP. Yes please.
Obvious one really, but not posted yet, and quite perfect:
The intro was then sampled heavily here:
EBTG had already of course experimented very successfully with drum’n’bass here – I remember really liking the album at the time, but haven’t played it in years:
A lovely song written by Paul Weller with Tracey Thorn on lead vocal.
Lovely, ’tis, But I prefer the version with Weller singing.
Here’s the playlist that I am working on…
I’d suggest the addition of Ben Watt’s beautiful song The Levels, featuring David Gilmour on slide guitar.
It’s from his second album, Hendra:
“My sister died just shortly after finishing my last book and it was a big shock. She’d led a very simple life as a shopkeeper at a simple village store and lived quite a claustrophobic life. Whenever she’d try to get away she went to this little house on the edge of Cornwall called Hendra. When she died I did some research on the name and found that it’s an old Cornish word for home. It had this odd lyrical quality to it. When I found the actual meaning it seemed like the perfect title for the record.”
Thanks for that excellent suggestion, @Gary.
Very interesting to read the story behind the song. Hendra is a fine word to add to our list of favourite foreign words.
Gilmour, eh? EBTG have always worked with the very best musicians, not least all those super jazzers who played on Eden.
Trying to find a clip of them, I stumbled across this unexpected treat. A Japanese cover version of Each and every one.
Here are EBTG live on Conan in 1999.
I knew that my pal @duco01 was a fan of Tracey and Ben.
At the weekend, he kindly let me know about his favourites. Here is what he wrote…
– early folky Ben and Tracey – HURRAH!
– Todd Terry remix dance scene Ben and Tracey – BOO!
Favourite albums:
A Distant Shore
Love Not Money
Eden
Idlewild (probably my favourite – brilliant)
I somehow suspected he wasn’t too keen about their re-invention of their sound.
Which brings us to EBTG’s most recent album, FUSE.
Here’s the single
And here’s an unplugged version from the BBC which perhaps works even better ….
The Duke will certainly like this one more.
As we have learnt on this thread, Tracey and Ben are both excellent writers whose books have enjoyed considerable success.
How many other musicians can you think of who have discovered that the pen is as might as the plectrum?
Patti Smith
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/13/just-kids-patti-smith-biography
and
Robert Forster
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/may/24/robert-forster-you-improve-as-a-person-as-you-get-older-i-think-thats-a-fact
come to mind,,,,