first listen: tracey thorn

Thirty years on from taking her first musical steps as a teenager in all-girl DIY post-punk outfit Marine Girls, Tracey Thorn needs no introduction. As Everything But The Girl, she and husband Ben Watt released nine studio albums in fifteen years, achieving their greatest commercial success with 1996’s Walking Wounded. While the duo’s extended hiatus grows ever longer, Thorn has returned to a solo career she abandoned after just one mini-album, 1982’s A Distant Shore. Her third solo album, Love & Its Opposite, is out May 17, and capitalises on the critical acclaim of her 2007 release, Out Of The Woods, a mixture of hard-edged dance music and folk fare which bridged the gap between the acoustic and the electric.

Love & Its Opposite finds Tracey and producer Ewan Pearson stripping things back to more organic essentials, embracing a retro sound that references the type of music she would have grown up listening to. Thorn is in pensive mood for much of the album, which is as much about her own experiences as a forty-something trying to make sense of her life as it is about the relationships of others, resulting in a mature and often cynically humorous set of songs that’s sure to be embraced by her stalwart fans.

Here’s our track-by-track preview.

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‘Oh, The Divorces!’

The opening song very much sums-up the mood of the album – slightly jaded, unsure, contemplative, the sound of a woman trying to figure out what love means to her in middle age. Thorn sounds weary, lamenting the fact that most of her friends are getting divorced rather than married, ironically asking “Who’s next?” Nursery rhyme-like piano is lovingly upholstered with a string quartet in a waltz-time signature, adding poignancy to the lyrical cynicism.

‘Long White Dress’

The theme of marriage continues here with a statement about not needing marriage to validate a life or, indeed, an existing relationship. Guitar arpeggios and piano washes swim ethereally around Tracey’s voice, with light drum flourishes and lovely vocal harmonies which add a country tinge to proceedings.

‘Hormones’

Providing a sudden change of pace, ‘Hormones’ is a rockier number referencing the music of Tracey’s past. Guitars, piano and drums underpin this amusing ditty of a mother going through the menopause while her teenage daughter is stomping angrily around the house: “Yours are just kicking in / mine are just checking out.”

‘Kentish Town’

Similar to the moody songs that Everything But The Girl are famed for, ‘Kentish Town’ is built around acoustic guitars, electronic washes and Tracey’s plaintive voice. Lyrically similar to EBTG’s biggest hit, ‘Missing’, here we find the singer moving through the streets, following the ghosts of her parents: “I found the church where you wed / and I stood where you stood / it didn’t feel the same,” she sings, wrapping wispy harmonies around the main vocal line.

‘Why Does The Wind?’

The retro-funk of ‘Why Does the Wind?’ is perhaps the closest Love & Its Opposite comes to the dancier territory of Out Of The Woods. Hammond-like organ and strings shimmer over throbbing bass and drums as Tracey laments an old lover. The refrain is one of her most immediate, building up over an ever-increasing musical tension that finally dissolves with wonderfully spiky strings.

‘You Are A Lover’

A cover of Hungarian band (and previous collaborators) The Unbending Trees, ‘You Are A Love’ is stripped to its barest elements. Amplified guitar licks provide an expansive sonic structure beneath her voice in a melody that recurs over and over in the folk tradition, with lyrics addressing an old friend as they take a chance on love.

‘Singles Bar’

The tongue-in-cheek ‘Singles Bar’ is a slow rock number; laidback drums, lazy basslines and electric guitar licks abound as Tracey paints one of her wonderfully provincial portraits of a hopeless middle-ager who frequents singles’ bars as she casts off her wedding ring and looks once more for love.

‘Come On Home To Me’

Originally by the mighty Lee Hazlewood, ‘Come On Home To Me’ is a duet with Swedish indie favourite Jens Lekman. It’s a gloomy hymn of sorts, all glockenspiels and electronic washes with a propulsive rhythm which never heeds as Tracey pleads for her lover to come home to her. The effect is eerie and relentless as an incantation spoken over and over.

‘Late In The Afternoon’

The electronic beats, muffled-reverb pianos and acoustic guitars of ‘Late In The Afternoon’ again reference Everything But The Girl as Tracey sounds at her most resigned, making an oblique parallel between being in middle age and the latter part of the day. The gentle melodies meander gracefully over the cold sonics, the lyrics sometimes painting the picture of a sorrowful figure: “I stand here every night in fluorescent bathroom light” – the sentiments of a woman who needs to be loved despite her faults.

‘Swimming’

Closing track ‘Swimming’ opens deceptively with synths and a dance rhythm until it widens with piano chords, shimmering guitars and rock drums as Tracey delivers a deliciously dissonant chorus refrain. The song is a series of crescendos, much like the water referenced in the lyrics and title, stripping things down for the middle eight before crashing in again with symbols and drums towards its delicate close.

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Love & Its Opposite is released May 17 on Strange Feeling Records.

Written by: P Viktor

Tags: love and its opposite, tracey thorn

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