Everything but the Girl
Eden

THE REVIEW

After the harsh critique of the two Aiazzone clerks, for the first "magnificat," it seems right to start again with another duo, more or less from the same era. Someone even explicitly asked me, aho facce capi che te piace(va). So Everything but the girl it is. My approach with the Hull duo wasn’t spontaneous at all, but was due to base utilitarian purposes and starting from diametrically opposite tastes.

Due to anthropological research needs, in the mid-80s I found myself mingling with a certain aristocratic youth and sharing their musical preferences and vaguely Mod clichés. Since it was an aristocracy of moderately progressive tendencies and composed tastes, I met convinced listeners of Style Council, among whom was a young Countess with eyes like the sky after a Maestrale gale.

With Countess, I messed up the approach. Blame it on the foolishness of being barely twenty, I tell myself. Instead of stamping bold metal on her face, I turned chameleon, delighted my eardrums with the refined compositions of Weller and Talbot, drifting onto Working Week and Matt Bianco, without disdaining detours into acid jazz, also bordering Weather Report. And so, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit."

I admit that it wasn't a sacrifice to dig the grooves of Café Bleu, and it didn't take long for me to be bewitched by a torch song like The Paris Match, particularly by the wonder of Tracey Thorn's voice. To please the Countess, I convincingly purchased the newly released Eden by Everything but the girl. Two copies, one for me and one for her. A Sandersonian gesture, I admit.

My above-mentioned utilitarian intentions were thwarted and swept away by the sound suggestions spreading from the vinyl, by that unexpected melange of jazz, bossa nova, and guitar beats. The magnetism of Tracey's voice contributed significantly to my disorientation.

An album like a two-faced medal: one side is Tracey Thorn's voice, the other is Ben Watt's music. Neither prevails, as they seem harmoniously fused, as rarely happens. I wasn't and still am not an expert in bel canto, I don't know how to technically frame that voice. It perhaps didn't have the power of other great performers of that era, I mention Annie Lennox and Alison Moyet above all, but it had such an austere softness and rigid sweetness that made it unique. The voice of a lover softly whispering to you in the post-orgasmic serenity.

In every piece of Eden, the interpretation is never over the top, few concessions to virtuosity, which she could afford, as in the case of "Frost and Fire" where sudden pitch spikes emerge, or in "Fascination" where it becomes more imperious.

All the compositions maintain an undercurrent of mellowness, whether it's the percussions and guitars riding the bossa nova of "Each and everyone", or the undulating "Bittersweet" or the plucked "Dustbowl" or the acid jazz raiding, with trumpet interventions à la Chet Baker, in "Crabwalk" as in "I must confess".

A limitation of this album? Well, perhaps it's too perfect, never a slip, never a dissonant fall. It's also a demonstration that talent, when present, emerges early, as when it was released in 1984, they were 22 years old.

And what I appreciated about EBTG, like Style Council, was the desire to break away from the British canon, rough, beer and rock 'n' roll, betrayed with sounds foreign to that tradition, like Latin and Caribbean rhythms, persuasive yet not sugary melodies, up to the French fascinations emerging in Café Bleu.

EBTG also had an ironic streak, starting with the chosen name, inspired by a furniture exhibition (not Aiazzone, I suppose), where for a room everything necessary was promised. Except the girl.

After the pop/jazz mellowness of their debut, Tracey and Ben probably sensed they were on a path where they could only worsen and deviated into other paths. Guitar pop, country, orchestral pop. I almost always missed them, except for Tracey's participation in Massive Attack's second album, Protection.

The sounds of Eden are associated by many with melancholic autumn days, but if I were a replicant from Blade Runner, they should implant in my hard drive the memory of a bright September day in Liguria, on the terrace of Countess’s house. Still them on the record player, Countess irremediably beside me, more frost than fire, her bob lightened by summer waving to Tracey’s voice, and to not hear her speak of friendship, I pretend to distract myself watching a sloop setting sail, at a time when the idea that no path is blocked is still allowed.