Love and Its Opposite

by Tracey Thorn

Overview

After the eight-year recording silence which lasted from the start of Everything But the Girl's indefinite hiatus until Tracey Thorn's triumphant re-emergence as a solo artist on 2007's Out of the Woods, the singer took only three years to return with a follow-up. Love and Its Opposite finds Thorn again working with Berlin-based house producer Ewan Pearson, but it effectively jettisons its predecessor's scintillating electro-pop for a more subdued chamber-folk style akin to that album's quieter moments; it's easily Thorn's least electronic work since EBtG's dramatic danceward shift in the mid-'90s. Then as now, the change of musical scenery hardly disrupts the caliber and sophistication of Thorn's songcraft or the power of her inimitable voice, which remains as gloriously warm as ever. Given that mood and maturity have always been her hallmarks, aging gracefully is scarcely even a concern: now that she's in a position to deliver a set of songs about the complexities of, in her phrase, "real life after forty," it feels utterly natural, a continuation of the emotional navigations she's spent her career documenting with characteristic insight and sensitivity. Stately waltz "Oh, The Divorces!" observes the seemingly inexorable progression of marriages dissolving around her with a creeping unease barely masked by its Sondheim-worthy elegance and verbal wit ("he was a charmer/I wish him bad karma"), and is deftly juxtaposed with the childhood nostalgia of "Long White Dress," concerning a life-long dread of weddings. (Perhaps tellingly, Thorn and EBtG-mate Ben Watt married in 2009, after 28 years of partnership.) On a lighter note, maybe, the bouncy "Hormones" comments breezily on menopause (the singer's) and adolescence (her daughters'), while "Singles Bar" is a wry treatment of aging-singles scenes and all its attendant hope and desperation ("can you smell the fear?"), in a tone that could be bleak or comical or both. Throughout, but especially in her poignant meditations on domestic relationships -- the achingly uncertain "Why Does the Wind" (given a nimble funk backing by Hot Chip bassist Al Doyle and Invisible stickman Leo Taylor), Lee Hazlewood's brooding "C'mon Home to Me" (sung with Jens Lekman), and the quietly self-scrutinizing "Late in the Afternoon" -- Thorn's romanticism is tempered by a hard-earned sensibility, approached with a mixture of comfort and resignation, that love and its opposite -- fear, perhaps, of loneliness or abandonment or simply death -- aren't truly opposed, but are necessary working complements, each enabling the possibility of the other. ~ K. Ross Hoffman

Product Details

Release Date:	05/18/2010
Label:	MERGE RECORDS
UPC:	0673855037929

Tracks

1. Oh, the Divorces!
2. Long White Dress
3. Hormones
4. Kentish Town
5. Why Does the Wind?
6. You Are a Lover
7. Singles Bar
8. Come on Home to Me
9. Late in the Afternoon
10. Swimming

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Tracey Thorn   Primary Artist,Vocals,Celeste,Piano,Guitar (Acoustic),Guitar (Electric)
Oliver Kraus   Cello
Jens Lekman   Vocals
Pamela Thorby   Recorder
Todd Tidwell   Bass
Cortney Tidwell   Drums,Vocals
Al Doyle   Bass,Guitar (Electric)
Ewan   Piano,Moog Bass,Stylophone,Farfisa Organ,Sampled Piano,Piano (Electric)
Beki Doe   Violin
Jono Ma   Guitar (Electric)
Thomas Roussel   Violin
Yannick Grandjean   Cello
Leo Taylor   Drums,Percussion

Technical Credits

Tracey Thorn   Composer,Lyricist
Kristof Hajos   Lyricist,Composer
Ewan Pearson   Mixing,Engineer,Producer
Oliver Kraus   String Arrangements
Lee Hazlewood   Composer,Lyricist
Kate St. John   Recorder Arrangement
Peter Funke   Engineer
Beki Doe   String Arrangements
Bruno Ellingham   Mixing,Engineer
Balazs Havasi   Composer
Thomas Roussel   String Arrangements
Yannick Grandjean   String Arrangements
John Gilsenan   Artwork