Review Summary: Tears and bile in twelve phases
She's such a sweet girl
Free of the taints of this world
Think that's a compliment?
Don't be so full of sentiment.
Why worship sweetness?
What virtue's there in weakness?
Being pushed about is nothing much to shout about, I know…
Taken from the bridge of early album highlight “Bittersweet”, these lines are a brutally succinct indication of what to expect on the vintage UK sophistipop duo Everything But The Girl’s debut album
Eden. The pair, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, are well known for the way they crafted pop songs rich with mature sentimentalism, drawing on non-pop influences that found themselves presented no less palatably. From their classic ‘pop’ era (culminating in 1994’s wonderful
Amplified Heart), this lead to a strong set of staple tracks such as “Missing” and “Goodbye Sunday” that upheld a comforting scope despite their engagement with melancholy subject matter.
Not so on
Eden. On this album, the duo’s troubled reflections on love gone astray are less heartbroken indulgences than uncomfortable reflections of toxic gender politics. Barely over half an hour long, this album displays more than enough refinement in its composition, lyrics and beautiful vocals to match up to the sophistipop label, but it passes with brutally fat-free pacing and residual bile, both striking for a first release from a largely savoury pop act. As even those unfamiliar with Everything But The Girl will know from her feature on Massive Attack’s stunning track “Protection”, vocalist Tracey Thorn’s has a gorgeously rich tone, wounded and soulful. This crops up in spades throughout
Eden, as she carries a range of engrossingly penned and often emotionally gritty odes to yesterday’s romance and today’s complications. However, there are points at which the force of the lyrics seems to impose a strain on her delivery - not in an adverse capacity, but as though the seething discontent of her words find themselves in almost violent competition with her otherwise impeccably smooth manner. For instance section of “Bittersweet” referenced overhead is delivered without a single note bend out of shape, but a few subtle inflections and choice staccatocisms in her plosives hint at a disarming reserve of repressed anger just about held behind her teeth. It’s a beautifully handled tension that cuts “Bittersweet” in particular out as a stunning track that loses not an ounce of its resonance thirty-seven years down the line.
Anyhow, if opener “Each And Every One” is an abrupt scene-setter and “Bittersweet” is an explosive nucleus of terse sourness, the remaining tracks find themselves very much in orbit of this opening statement; not with the connotations or B-sides or an early peak, but rather as the unrelentingly focused unpacking of a vicious central treatise. Over the course of this, Thorn hardly restricts herself to any individual drama; “The Spice of Life”, for instance, finds her compromised with a lover over an inopportune phone call and trapped in the unflattering image of the Other Woman, whereas “Fascination” puts her in the company of an old flame, attempting openness while guarding past scars. However, her steady tone of soulful weariness carries these songs in a similar direction despite their disparities, raising
Eden’s prevailing malaise from a passing misgiving to a sustained attitude. Likewise, the album pulls a few twists in musical vocabulary without breaking the its overarching groove. Its sound is heavily grounded in bossa nova rhythms accompanied by nods towards jazz in their chords and harmonies; all things considered, this a broad enough mission statement to lend itself to a range of permutations. “I Must Confess” cracks out a saxophone solo worthy of any uncertainly fated romance movie, “Even So” kicks off with an acoustic lick that could come straight from a seaside arcade, “Dustbowl” turns the bread and butter of early rock ’n’ roll into a listless sway, while “Another Bridge” dips into jangle pop for a rare upbeat moment that points more towards the group’s future direction, and so on: all these serve appropriately as a foundation for Thorn’s bitter musings.
This isn’t to overlook Ben Watt’s mictime, as he handles lead vocals on “Tender Blue”’s downbeat waltz and the sobering closer “Soft Touch.” On these tracks, his voice is not the answering counterpart to any of the various “you”s addressed by Thorn, but rather a narratorial figure able to frame
Edens various dramas in more balanced but no less troubled terms. This is crucial on “Soft Touch”, the only track here that delivers the same kind of visceral impact as “Bittersweet.” Watt rounds off the album with a great solemness that seems to reinforce the weight of all its prior meditations; lines like “There’s a wife been involved in the pillow fight” are rich with ominous subtext. His closing proclamation of “a soft touch finally come to blows” feels like the utterance the whole album has been reaching for from the outset, too crass to accompany Thorn’s glum ruminations or Watt’s delicate exposition, but very much present behind the scenes. Dropping it at the final moment in this way feels as much an obligation as it does a moot point, and so
Eden comes to a close off the bitterly satisfying sense that nothing more remains to be said.
In any case,
Eden’s disciplined songwriting, breezy runtime and emotional fervour probably cut it out as a cult classic for fans of vintage pop, or what have you; that’s by the by. Its sound palette may be wear its age on its sleeve, but the album packs enough of a punch to make for a rewarding and, at points, uncomfortably infectious listen for anyone approaching it for the first time today.
