Tracey Thorn – Record

Deeply personal songs infused with elegance and disco

Perhaps the first word that comes to mind when you mention Tracey Thorn is “class”, followed closely by “understated” then “underrated”. From her beginnings as half of sophisti-pop mainstays Everything But The Girl, to their brief dalliance with dance music which brought them a worldwide smash; to her solo career as singer, then novelist, then newspaper columnist; to her closely guarded private life, including her marriage with former bandmate and frequent collaborator Ben Watt; it has been a long career of constant, yet subtle change, always with elegance. Here she is now with an album of her first original music in nearly a decade, and the keywords are more than appropriate. Everyone is doing disco these days, but none as classy as Thorn’s jazzy tracks about feminism, family, memories and growing old. And few can sing like she does, silky smooth and arrestingly powerful, all at once.

Highlights: “Sister”, “Queen”, “Guitar”, “Dancefloor”