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[ t e x t . o n l y . v e r s i o n ] [ b y . c y c l o n e . w e h n e r ] Three years ago Everything But The Girl pulled off one of pop music's most successful metamorphoses with their album, "Walking Wounded". It's now been over 15 years since EBTG -- college sweethearts Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt -- originally surfaced internationally with their debut LP, "Eden". In the 80s they found a core of devotees with their intimate, sophisticated and quintessentially British mix of 60s pop, folk, indie-rock, jazz and Northern soul balladry. Far from being contrived, ETBG's 90s reinvention came as something of a fortuitous accident when New York house producer Todd Terry remixed "Missing", a song recovered from the duo's under-appreciated LP, "Amplified Heart", of 1994. At around the same time, the two had worked with Massive Attack on their "Protection" album. And so these cool associations introduced EBTG to a whole new generation of fans. With the rise of the clubby 'listening album' in the mid-90s, the possibilities for a rejuvenated EBTG seemed endless. Now the duo are back with their ninth set, "Temperamental", which represents yet another excursion into dance culture. Its upbeat lead single, "Five Fathoms", sets the tone for an album of groovy cerebralism. The listener could be lulled into thinking that "Temperamental" is mellow and harmonious, yet not surprisingly, Thorn's lyrics and composed vocal delivery reveal otherwise. Her 90s torch songs capture the inherent emptiness, loneliness and artifice of a club scene that has apparently compromised the utopian dreams of the acid house era. 'There's plenty of spiky, emotional stuff,' Ben reflects. 'The deep soulful house tracks are very approachable and quite accessible, but I would say that tracks like "Blame" and "Compression", the drum 'n' bass track, are actually quite confrontational for a pop record.' When "Walking Wounded" came out, Ben said it felt like a rebirth -- all the more so after he had survived a life-threatening illness (Watt was struck down by an auto-immune disorder). What did the two ultimately learn from the experience of recording that album? 'I rediscovered my enthusiasm for making records again. It felt really fresh and just quite inspiring to get back in the studio and do something brand new. It was kinda like picking up a guitar all over again, but this time it was a sampler [laughs]. And there was a lot of water under the bridge after my illness. I felt that from 93-94 onwards we were really beginning again and "Walking Wounded" was like a culmination of two or three years of rebuilding and preparation. And I suppose "Temperamental" is just taking it another step forward.' Indeed, "Temperamental" follows much the same experimental trajectory as its predecessor. However, the album has also been greatly informed by Watt's moonlighting as a club DJ in recent years. (Some may even remember his mix-up show on Triple J when EBTG last toured Australia.) These days Watt actually presides over his own chill-out Sunday club, Lazy Dog, in Notting Hill, where he spins deep house. He has also been broached on occasion to spin more experimental, harder drum 'n' bass at venues like Swerve and Movement. Newly confident, Watt oversaw the bulk of the production on "Temperamental", working with outsiders solely on the breakbeat-riddled "Compression" (with jungle luminary J Majik) and "The Future Of The Future" (Washington DC house icons Deep Dish). The latter first materialised on Deep Dish's slept-on longplayer of last year. Mercifully EBTG have cast aside the odd spiteful accusation about their jumping on the dance bandwagon. There can be no denying that Watt knows his club music. Mildly contemptuous of the ubiquitous trance and minimalist techno, Ben instead enthuses about intelligent drum 'n' bass, deep house and even Detroit's future soul. ('I love that serene urban sound that really great Detroit techno has.') So why didn't EBTG realise their affinity with dance earlier on? Watt breaks it down. 'I think during the late 80s -- during the acid house scene -- I was just an observer from a distance. It was hard to ignore because it was so dominant in England at the time. But I felt it was an area of music that was inaccessible to EBTG. I thought the kind of hedonistic streak in the music didn't really align itself with what we were trying to do with our music at the time. It seemed too extreme, I suppose. But I think by the beginning of the 90s the whole dance scene was broadening -- ideas were coming in, from downtempo to uptempo, and I just thought it got more interesting and more appropriate to our music. And, of course, it coincided with a period where we felt the time was right to move on. We felt isolated as a band and perhaps a little bit adrift. I think it was time to revitalise our music with something fresh and obviously working with Massive Attack and Todd Terry was a real opportunity.' "Temperamental" is out through Virgin. |