THE EP FEATURES FOUR TRACKS TAKEN FROM THE BAND’S RECENT BBC 6 MUSIC LIVE SESSION
WATCH A VIDEO FOR RUN A RED LIGHT FROM THE SESSION HERE
Recent praise for Everything But The Girl:
“Fuse picks up where Temperamental left off. The songs are uniformly beautiful” – THE GUARDIAN
“Everything But The Girl’s triumphant new album, Fuse … some of the duo’s most bewitching – and soul-baring – dance anthems to date.” – PITCHFORK
‘Fuse makes a church of its elegant electronica’ – THE INDEPENDENT
‘Fuse is the the blueprint for any alt-leaning electronic act in the pop space’ – NME
“These tracks are propelled by a sense of urgency … a piece of sonic architecture”- MOJO
“A graceful, majestic, moving experience … stands as one of the best albums Everything But The Girl have put their name against.” – CLASH
‘It’s as if EBTG never went away … Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt turn back time. How lovely to be back there’ – SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE
‘Here they are again, picking up where they left off in a sparkling flurry of gleaming electronica and melodious melancholy’ – THE TELEGRAPH
Everything But The Girl have today revealed details of their new At Maida Vale EP, which is out now digitally. The EP is made up of four tracks recorded in April at the BBC’s famous Maida Vale Studios – Run A Red Light, Single and When You Mess Up, first broadcast on Gideon Coe’s BBC 6 Music show; and Nothing Left To Lose first heard on Jo Whiley’s BBC Radio 2 show. A video of the Run A Red Light performance shot on the day by Edward Bishop can be watched here. All the recordings are versions of tracks on the band’s current album, Fuse, except Single which first appeared on their platinum 1996 album, Walking Wounded. The session was the only live performance that the band did around the release of their new album.
Ben and Tracey are also hosting the current 8-week season of BBC 6 Music’s mix show, Lose Yourself , delivering their own fresh 60-minute DJ mix each week and introducing a special guest mixer in the second hour. The show can also be listened to on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 1 Relax.
Speaking about their new At Maida Vale EP, Tracey says: “It was exciting returning to such a famous studio to record these tracks. It was almost 40 years since our first John Peel Session there. The idea was to start by approaching all four as live piano and vocal takes.”
“Nothing Left To Lose was then left stripped back as a complete contrast to the original,” adds Ben, “while for the others we added a few one-take overdubs of synth, guitar, drums and backing vocals to capture both the spontaneity of a session but a flavour of the original album arrangements.”
Everything But The Girl’s new album Fuse charted at Number 3 in the UK Official Album Chart, the highest position of the band’s career. The Guardian was among several top publications to post a 5-star review (‘Still staking out pop’s frontier after 40 years … a comeback worth waiting for’). Pitchfork called it the duo’s ‘triumphant new album … bewitching and soul-baring‘. High level support has also come at radio (two singles on the BBC 6 Music A-List Playlist) and at key editorial DSP playlists (New Music Friday, All New Indie, Altar, Metropolis, The Other List, Loops).
Written and produced by Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn over the spring-summer of 2022, Everything But The Girl’s new album 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.
Everything But The Girl broke through on the UK indie scene in 1982 with a stark jazz-folk cover of Cole Porter’s Night and Day. They then released a string of UK gold albums throughout the 80s, experimenting with jazz, guitar pop, orchestral wall-of-sound and drum-machine soul. After Watt’s near-death experience from a rare auto-immune condition in 1992, the pair returned unbowed with the million-selling ardent folktronica of Amplified Heart in 1994. It includes their biggest hit, Missing, after New York DJ-producer Todd Terry’s remix unexpectedly made the leap from heavy club play to global radio success (Number 2 US Hot 100; Number 3 UK Top 40). The sparkling Walking Wounded – emotional songs brimming with ideas from the mid 90s electronic scene – followed in 1996 (Number 4 UK Album Chart). Spawning four UK Top 40 hits, the record became the band’s first platinum selling album. After their final show at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2000, the pair chose to pause Everything But The Girl on a high.
