Everything AND the girl as Tracey pops back
When Tracey Thorn put her jazz- pop duo everything But The Girl on hold in 2000, she left music behind to focus on raising a family with musical partner, and later husband, Ben Watt.
The pair went out on a high, too, their careers having been revitalised by an American dance mix of their single Missing. But a sabbatical did little to blunt Thorn’s artistic edge. The singer, 55, made a lowkey comeback with 2007’s Out Of The Woods, and has since recorded three more solo albums and written a memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, taking inspiration from her life away from the stage.
This latest solo effort, out next week, finds her continuing to pen some of pop’s sharpest lyrics while making a glorious return to the synth-powered dance rhythms that revived everything But The Girl. electronic producer ewan Pearson is a slick, but unobtrusive, presence, helping to turn Record into a punchy, nine-song affair that glides by with little slack.
With the exception of two original compositions on a 2012 Christmas LP, these are Tracey’s first new songs since Love And Its Opposite, a 2010 collection she calls ‘my mid-life album, full of divorce and hormones’.
Record pushes the story forward, embracing the bittersweet sense of liberation that comes in the aftermath of bringing up children. ‘ I’ve always written songs that chronicle the milestones of a woman’s life,’ says Thorn. ‘The different ages not often discussed in pop lyrics.’
Thorn’s new vantage point is most obvious on Go, a ballad examining her feelings as her two teenage daughters depart for university. Singing in a falsetto at odds with the deep, resonant tone adopted elsewhere, she tackles her contrasting emotions with sharp sensitivity before admitting: ‘This all makes sense to me now.’
Revisiting Bedsit Disco Queen’s autobiographical tone, she uses another number, Smoke, to look back at her childhood and the experiences of her own parents, who left London to raise a family in the satellite town of hatfield. Thorn later returned to London, and the song, which has echoes of her work with triphop act Massive Attack, builds into an ambivalent love letter to the capital.
elsewhere, Face examines the pitfalls of social media addiction (‘I shouldn’t be clicking on your new Valentine’) and
Queen is fuelled by wry rumination on love and fame. New single Sister, her ‘ feminist groove anthem’, tackles misogyny against an unexpectedly funky backdrop.
There are some notable cameos, too. Drummer Stella Mozgawa and bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, of Californian girl band Warpaint, enhance Tracey’s shimmering electric guitar on Queen. Corinne Bailey Rae guests on Sister.
Record ends, just 36 minutes after it began, with a celebration of good times: Dancefloor salutes the hit songs, including Evelyn ‘ Champagne’ King’s Shame and Bowie’s Golden Years, that inspired Thorn to keep making music.
■ DITA VON TEESE’S first album, out now, is billed as a record about ‘ the power of seduction and the ecstasy of letting go’, which makes it sound more like a novelty fragrance than a musical enterprise. In reality, it’s a slight affair that feels like a vanity project.
The burlesque dancer and queen of vintage Hollywood style, 45, admits that she isn’t much of a singer, but she’s also let down by the weakness of her material.
She insists the record is ‘me with less make-up’, but tracks such as Rendez-Vous — which details an illicit romantic encounter via lines like ‘my tongue in the juice of sugar again’ — are silly rather than revealing.
Looking to modern Parisian dance music and the period sounds of fellow Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg, producer Sebastian Tellier coats Von Teese’s languid voice in old- school electronics, with percussive drive coming from programmer John Kirby and drummer Daniel Stricker.
The album has its moments — La Vie Est Un Jeu is set against a piano backdrop recalling Elton John’s Benny And The Jets — but Dita’s first musical detour is largely humdrum.