CONCERT REVIEW: Everything But The Girl; New York City
- Wilson Neate
A couple of months ago, during an inexcusable moment of weakness, I found myself watching a characteristically vapid and pointless VH-1 program whose storyline was something highly substantive like "bands who were big for about a second and then vanished completely." Alongside such foundational pop luminaries as Wang Chung, A Flock of Seagulls, Talk Talk, Modern English and Naked Eyes (who?), much to my consternation, Everything But The Girl were treated to their own segment.
Fans of EBTG who were unfortunate enough to see this program were no doubt delighted to learn that, according to VH-1's narrative, Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn essentially came out of nowhere in 1994, had a fluke hit with a ditty called "Missing" and "are still recording music." Hmm, I was under the impression that --- in addition to their own work before EBTG --- Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn had released six full studio albums together prior to the release of "Missing," and, since then, have continued to enjoy popular and critical acclaim globally. I must have imagined all of that.
Still, while EBTG's illustrious peers, A Flock of Seagulls (at least in the alternate reality of VH-1), would be hard-pressed to fill a paper bag with what remains of their once trademark hairstyles, I am pleased to report that EBTG not only filled the Hammerstein Ballroom last night, they sold it out. Quite an achievement for an alleged one-hit-wonder act.
As the official Everything But The Girl website ( http://www.ebtg.com ) informs us, this was to be the last concert of the century for Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn. It was also their only US appearance in support of the recent release of the predictably near-perfect Temperamental, which has to be an 11th hour contender for album of the year.
EBTG had the right idea last night, dispensing with that tired convention known as the opening act - which, 90% of the time, is a bad idea as much for the audience which has to wait its way through it as it is for the band that has to play for an unreceptive crowd. Mercifully, EBTG opted to entrust the warm-up responsibilities to a low-key, onstage DJ who enabled us to go about our regular, pre-show business of drinking and chatting with minimum distraction.
Maybe to check if anyone was listening, though, in the midst of his spinning activities, he broke the unwritten rule and actually played an EBTG track ("Five Fathoms"). In this case, however, it was a calculated, smart move that was met with general approval and just turned the level of expectancy and excitement up another notch.
Accompanied by a bass player and drummer who enhanced the programmed beats, EBTG kicked off the show with "Before Today" and went on to deliver a slick, hour-and-a-half-long set of material drawn primarily from Walking Wounded and Temperamental.
While in musical terms it's been a long and diverse journey from Hull University in 1982 to New York's Hammerstein Ballroom in 1999, the most recent stages of that trek have been particularly exciting for Everything But The Girl and their fans. And the experience of them live really underscores the quite remarkable way in which Watt and Thorn have reinvented themselves, especially over the last five years.
Indeed, their career seems to have gone against the grain of the rock and roll narrative; while bands these days usually make a huge initial impact, enjoy a short-lived period in which they coincide perfectly with the current trends and then descend into anonymity or irrelevance, EBTG have gone from strength to strength and have remained totally relevant.
The pivotal moment in their career came with "Missing" - especially the Todd Terry remix thereof - a track that seemed almost like an afterthought, albeit a brilliant one, to the hitherto standard jazz/folk tinged pop fare on 1994's Amplified Heart. While "Missing" gave a clue as to the direction they were taking, few people could have imagined that EBTG would emerge as the leading exponents of such classy, dance-oriented pop music as they have of late - first with 1996's predominantly drum and bass-influenced Walking Wounded and this year with the more house-derived Temperamental.
In this latest stage of their career, Ben Watt has pretty much yielded the vocals to Tracey Thorn and has channeled his considerable talents as a musician, DJ and producer into crafting their strikingly original new sound. And on their last two records - as they proved last night - they've achieved a perfectly balanced form, harmoniously combining the strength and clarity of Thorn's evocative vocals with a danceable, compelling musical texture, in ironic contrast perhaps to the disharmony that their lyrics continue to foreground. Their songs relentlessly work through highly personalized accounts of regret, loss, and general unhappiness in and out of love - quite a remarkable artistic feat in itself, given the reality of their own enduring long-term relationship.
Lyrical content aside, though, what you hear in EBTG's songs is the melody of Tracey Thorn's voice, foregrounded and perfectly complimented by the unobtrusive yet distinctive collage of sounds created by Watt. And in terms of that melody, Thorn consistently manages to somehow project a beautifully ambivalent quality that is at once detached and intimate, strong and fragile, disinterested and emotive.
That ambiguous nature of Thorn's voice epitomizes the creative tension that makes their music so distinctive. EBTG's sound contrasts starkly with much of the currently popular techno/DJ based fodder. A great deal of the latter is characterized by repetition, by a tendency to trade in a single affect and by a penchant for clinical, sampled textures that often jar with each other and that are often stripped of any of their original meaning, used only toward some simplistic, functional end. By contrast, Watt and Thorn build a subtle, seamless musical and vocal whole and pull off a stunning marriage of the impersonality of the sample/electronic dance beat and a uniquely identifiable, expressive sound that has always been the essence of EBTG.
As last night's show emphasized, their achievement is a synthesis of opposites. They build their tracks as a hybridization of the anonymous house/breakbeat sound and the highly personal, inscribing within the framework of the former a range and depth of feeling and mood largely absent from much electronic music, which seems focused only on a superficial, party-oriented euphoria.
Last night, that craft was exemplified by EBTG's performance of the track "Single," a song dominated by a slow techno drum beat but shot through with feeling. With sleight of hand, Ben Watt not only manages to sample Tim Buckley's 1970 classic "Song To The Siren" - quite an accomplishment in itself - but he also makes "Single" hinge around this minimal, almost unnoticable hook. That sample isn't just a technical effect that sounds good or serves some novelty purpose. Rather, EBTG use it as a beautifully simple, intertextual homage to Buckley that simultaneously provides them with the emotive material with which to construct their song. While Buckley's masterpiece of longing and loneliness is pared down to that fragile sample, both musically and vocally, "Single" draws out and articulates the affective quality of the original.
Not surprisingly, "Missing" drew the biggest reaction and provided a rare moment of interaction (apart from a couple of "thank you"s) as Tracey Thorn yielded the vocals to the crowd on the chorus. But then, everything was well-received last night, especially "Walking Wounded," "Wrong," and the new songs "Five Fathoms," "Blame," "Hatfield 1980," "Temperamental" and "The Future of the Future."
For an encore, they treated us to a version of "Protection." While 3D has claimed some degree of credit for the rebirth of EBTG, owing to Thorn's work with Massive Attack, it remains that Thorn wrote the lyrics and it really is her vocals that make the song.
Despite their lack of verbal interaction with the crowd, they clearly enjoyed themselves, something that was confirmed the next day as their website's top five list of "What Rocks Today!" was updated to include The Hammerstein Ballroom.
