Everything but the Girl
Fuse

Where were we? Ah yes, 1999, ninety-nine, 24 years ago, twenty-four...

24 years could be almost a lifetime if youth is burned and one doesn't reach thirty. 24 years could be half a life that hasn't reached a midlife crisis (7x7). 24 years could be a third of the life of most of the omnivorous humanity. 24 years could be a quarter of the life of a vegetarian who frequently fasts systematically. I could continue up to Methuselah, but I'll stop here.

1999... I meet my future wife, I hand her “Temperamental”, the album drives me crazy with how beautiful, dynamic and poignant it is. But she listens to it and explains to me the solitude hidden under the superb thump-thump of the soundscape: I can't help but bow to this revelation. I gift her the CD and the next day I buy it again, for twenty years one copy stays at home and one is fixed in the car.

24 years... Shortly after that, I pack my bags and move to another country, we get married, my daughter is born, my son is born, we make a home, we go through all the regular vicissitudes of family life. The kids grow up, we frequently listen to their CD in the car, years go by, decades pass.

Every year, my wife and I start asking, “So, they won't come back?” there's a non-sad melancholy in this, life isn’t made with life. Ben and Tracey often in my thoughts of solitude, where are you? what are you doing? how are you?

The 24-year absence erases the count of time and thus the sudden release in this 2023 astounds in the absence it conveys. Everything floats in an intangible wonder: "am I dreaming or awake?" Psss, the new work by Everything has been released, am I dreaming or awake?

I listened to it online with apprehension, fearing it might disappear suddenly. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, if the previous albums were better or not, if the voice has changed a bit, the only thing is: THE NEW EVERYTHING ALBUM IS OUT!

I smile, and smile, I will go buy it, display it prominently and won't listen to it for a while, I'll be there imagining Ben and Tracey with their mischievous time machine that erases 24 years, that nullifies illusions, that makes us happy. Welcome back, thank you...