British Sophisto-Crooner Publishes First Solo LP in 25 Years

This month Tracy Thorn, a British songstress best known for her work as vocalist of the 1980's sophisto-pop duo Everything But The Girl, published her second solo LP, Out Of The Woods. The record is receiving mainly positive reviews. I'm not quite so enthusiastic.

Thorn's recording career began with the Marine Girls, an all-female band universally characterized as "amateurish," "spare," or "twee," and inspired by acts like The Raincoats and The Young Marble Giants. Thorn released her first solo record, A Distant Shore, in 1982. It too was "spare," and felt pleasantly homemade. It is probably most notable for its very canny cover of The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale."

In Everything But The Girl, Thorn and her partner Ben Watt established themselves as purveyors of sophisticated (but unpretentious) bossa-nova-tinged pop, reminiscent of The Style Council, or even Sade. EGBT's first record, 1984's Eden, is a classic of it's subgenre. Much of the material on Eden was released in America in a self titled record that same year. State-siders such as your author likely were first introduced to Thorn's work through the brief sophisto-pop revival embodied (perhaps exclusively) by The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group, a non-prolific but well-loved 1990's indie act. Thorn's work finally reached American radio when an electronic remix of "Missing" from EBTG's 1994 Amplified Heart LP became a hit.

Thorn's singing is subtle, mature and appropriately characterized as classic. Her music makes just as much sense played over the loudspeaker in a Gap store as it does played in a well-renowned art gallery or in a rat's nest high school kid's bedroom, and I've heard it played in all of those places. But my initial impression is that Out Of The Woods is not among Thorn's best records.

Out Of The Woods is packaged very nicely; the artwork does much to work with Thorn's unfortunately over-obvious title motif. But the few tracks from the album featured on Thorn's myspace profile (I confess that I have not purchased the new LP) do much to confirm my initial apprehensions that Out Of The Woods might pander too much to fans of Thorn's foray into the dance club world. Much has been made of the fact that Out Of The Woods is being published after what has been universally characterized as an extensive maternity leave on Thorn's part, and I have nothing useful to add to such discussions. It is my hope that the release of this new album might garner interest not only in this new LP, but also in Thorn's entire back catalog.