Fuse (LP)

Fuse is the first new studio album from Everything But The Girl in 24 years. Written and produced by Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn over the spring-summer of 2021, Fuse is a modern take on the lustrous electronic soul the band first pioneered in the mid-90s. Thorn's affecting and richly-textured voice is once again up front in Watt's glimmering landscape of sub-bass, sharp beats, half-lit synths and empty space, and as before, the result is the sound of a band comfortable with being both sonically contemporary, yet agelessly themselves.

The pair recorded in secret at home and in a small riverside studio outside Bath with friend and engineer Bruno Ellingham. Early takes focussed on ambient sound montages and improvised spectral piano loops recorded by Ben on his iPhone at home during his enforced pandemic isolation - ideas which later blossomed into atmospheric tracks such as "When You Mess Up" and "Interior Space". Yet, as confidence grew, so did the pulse and rhythm of the album, culminating in the writing and programming of later songs, such as the new single "Nothing Left To Lose" and "Caution To The Wind". Shot through with alternating hope, desperation and vivid flashbacks, the album's lyrics - sometimes allusive, sometimes richly detailed - capture what it's like to start again.