About

Fuse is the first new studio album from Everything But The Girl in 24 years. Written and produced by Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn over the spring-summer of 2021, Fuse is a modern take on the lustrous electronic soul the band first pioneered in the mid-90s. Thorn's affecting and richly-textured voice is once again up front in Watt's glimmering landscape of sub-bass, sharp beats, half-lit synths and empty space, and as before, the result is the sound of a band comfortable with being both sonically contemporary, yet agelessly themselves.

The pair recorded in secret at home and in a small riverside studio outside Bath with friend and engineer Bruno Ellingham. Early takes focused on ambient sound montages and improvised spectral piano loops recorded by Ben on his iPhone at home during his enforced pandemic isolation - ideas which later blossomed into atmospheric tracks such as "When You Mess Up" and "Interior Space". Yet, as confidence grew, so did the pulse and rhythm of the album, culminating in the writing and programming of later songs, such as the new single "Nothing Left To Lose" and "Caution To The Wind". Shot through with alternating hope, desperation and vivid flashbacks, the album's lyrics - sometimes allusive, sometimes richly detailed - capture what it's like to start again. — (via Label)

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After 24 years, the electronic pop duo returns with a moving, handsome album that tells a sophisticated story about recapturing innocence.

EBTG has never been burdened by its history; they’re more inclined to ditch it from album to album, jumping between bossa nova and lite jazz to jangly indie, rousing ’60s orchestrations, soul, and drum’n’bass. But on Fuse, the duo pick up at least in the spirit of where they left off, keeping their connection to contemporary club culture alive. While the stories of Croydon boys, “girls and night-off waiters” on “No One Knows We’re Dancing” hark back to a Sunday daytime club that Watt ran in 1999, its wistful euphoria and sense of starry-eyed sanctuary dovetail with today’s dancefloors. The serrated “Nothing Left to Lose” evokes “Katy on a Mission” for a corporate London now hollowed of promise; “Caution to the Wind” is an anxious but devotional sad banger with a chorus that feels as if it’s existed forever (European listeners, however, may be distracted by a synth refrain that sounds annoyingly like the announcement chime in Paris train stations); “Forever” is a gamelan-dappled Balearic sunset, albeit one viewed with a giant lump in the throat.

The album ends with “Karaoke,” a contemplation by famous non-performer Thorn on what it means to sing, to take a risk at connection. It’s a glowing slow dance with herself, a call and response between an angelic chorus asking whether she sings to “heal the brokenhearted” or “get the party started,” and Thorn’s fulsome responses: “Oh you know I do … And I love that too.” Perhaps that’s what EBTG’s perspective has afforded them—to recognize how easily we can get in the way of life’s moments of innocence. Like Fuse, they’re rare. — (via Pitchfork)

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— 180g black vinyl
— Issued with a four-page fold-out lyrics and credits insert

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Label: Buzzin' Fly Record / Virgin Music / Verve Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, 180 gram
Released: 2023
Genre: Electronic, Pop
Style: House, Indie Pop

File under: Alternative / Indie / Pop
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