skip past newsletter promotionĪs with the album that introduced the new, beat-driven EBTG to the world, 1996’s Walking Wounded, none of this ever feels like artists of a certain age glomming on to the latest trends. You suspect Thorn and Ben Watt did this not just because it sounds intriguing and works within the context of the song – it leaves Thorn, playing the role of a consoling friend, effectively duetting with herself – but because they know a certain kind of EBTG fan would consider it sacrilege. On When You Mess Up, Thorn’s voice is fed through an Auto-Tune-like effect: not the familiar one that adds an android sheen to swathes of contemporary pop, but something more dramatic, rendering one of pop’s more immediately recognisable voices completely unrecognisable. The muffled tones of Caution to the Wind and the fluff-on-the-needle distortion applied to Interior Space suggest the lo-fi house of Ross from Friends or DJ Seinfeld. The heavy bass and two-step garage skip to the rhythm of opener Nothing Left to Lose place it squarely in the post-dubstep world: so too do the ghostly electronics that gust around the album’s piano ballads and the slow-motion Lost, decorated with skittering hi-hats and twisted, disembodied samples of Thorn’s voice. ![]() So is Fuse, complete with the developments that have taken place in dance music over the ensuing 24 years. Temperamental was a product of its era, rooted in US house and drum’n’bass. You could argue that it picks up where 1999’s Temperamental left off – it’s definitely the work of the EBTG who were reinvigorated by dance music – but that doesn’t feel quite right. It bears little more than a superficial similarity to their past work, aside from Thorn’s voice, which has aged in a way that suits her: deeper, a little rougher around the edges, and, if anything, even more careworn. Thorn’s ambivalent attitude to live performance – a subject rather sweetly explored on Fuse’s closing track, Karaoke – means there’s no warmly received reunion tour. Eden established them among a wave of artists dubbed new jazz, but they never made an album that sounded like it again: theirs is a back catalogue in which slick modern soul chafes against kitchen-sink-drama indie and deep house, where lavish 60s orchestrations fight for space with drum’n’bass inspired by Peshay and Alex Reece. ![]() But Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn were never a band minded to abide by anything but a desire, as Thorn once put it, “to defy categorisation even at the risk of losing a guaranteed audience”. Bands who reform decades on from their breakthrough tend to follow a set path: warmly received live shows playing the hits, followed by a new album designed to evoke fond memories of the way they – and their fans – once were.
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