release date: Mar. 2, 2018
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,48]
producer: Ewan Pearson
label: Unmade Road - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Queen" - 2. "Air" - 3. "Guitar" - 5. "Sister" - 8. "Face"
5th studio album by Tracey Thorn released on [her husband] the Ben Watt-founded label Unmade Roads comes 2½ years after her extensive compilation album Solo: Songs and Collaborations 1982-2015 (made as both 2-disc and single disc issues) and follows some 5½ years since her latest solo studio album Tinsel and Lights from 2012.
Stylistically, these new songs don't expose any new moves by Thorn. It's all made in a warm atmosphere of synthpop alt. dance, which mostly points back to her 2007 comeback solo album Out of the Woods, which is her latest album of pure synthpop, but in essence, the songs feel more like extended and well-known sophisti-pop of Everything but the Girl.
Despite not having released more than 5 albums in the span of 36 years - 3 of which have been issued since 2007, this new solo album is actually Thorn's best selling album to date peaking at number #15 on the national albums chart list, and the critical reception also seems to have welcomed the album as one of her best. Tracey Thorn is currently not "just" known for her musical output - be it her early stages with Marine Girls, her most famous contributions with Ben Watt and their project Everything but the Girl, or her solo releases - she is also columnist of New Statesman; and an acclaimed author of so far three books with the best-selling autobiographical debut from 2013, "Bedsit Disco Queen". Luckily, she hasn't completely abandoned music, and this her most recent album only demonstrates what a gifted musician she is.
It's not so much the songs themselves as the characteristic vocal of Thorn that makes these 9 songs shine. It's an album only touching 35 mins. running time, but Thorn sounds just as fresh and vibrant as on familiar albums of the 1980s or 1990s - there's simply no trace of the years gone by in that fine instrument of hers - and that's this album's biggest feature.
Record is a fine return of one of Britain's finest vocals.
[ allmusic.com, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph 4 / 5, Rolling Stone 3,5 / 5 stars ]
