Everything but the Girl: Fuse album review — surprise return aims at a leap into the unknown

Everything but the Girl have always been an impressively poised band, starting with the stylish cadence of their name, taken from the slogan of a furniture shop in Hull where Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt met as university students in the 1980s. But the pair’s songs can have a tidy aspect too, an air of understatement more suggestive of neatness than mystery at what’s being left unsaid.

This tendency towards tidiness might be linked to their being romantic as well as musical partners. “One of the things that contributed to the end of Everything but the Girl was the slight pressure of being a couple and a band together,” Thorn said in 2012. Distinguishing between personal and professional became tricky after their international breakthrough with the single “Missing” in 1994. Following 1999’s Temperamental, they retired Everything but the Girl in order to concentrate on family life and solo work.

Casually revealed by the duo in a tweet last year, understated as ever (“Just thought you’d like to know . . . ”), Fuse marks a surprise comeback. It opens with Thorn as a lovelorn individual addressing the object of her desire in “Nothing Left to Lose”. “Tell me what to do, ’cause I’ve always listened to you,” she sings. With symmetrical logic, the closing track “Karaoke” finds her being listened to, this time in the role of a karaoke singer, a theme linked to her memoir about singing, Naked at the Albert Hall.

That book’s thoughtfulness about vocal performance is reflected in the album’s most noticeable stylistic switch-up, its use of voice-processing effects. “Don’t just discard your old self,” Thorn croons in “When You Mess Up”, at which point her resonant tones take on a strange computerised wobble. Impetuously titled tracks such as “Run a Red Light” and “Caution to the Wind” indicate a further leap into the unknown. But the album actually takes a more balanced view of continuity and change.

Musically, it follows the electronic bearing of the duo’s 1990s commercial peak. “Nothing Left to Lose” has a satisfyingly thwacky dance-floor energy, although its dynamism proves a red herring. Other tracks adopt a slower tempo, like chill-out torch songs. Sophistication shades into the well-kempt with discreetly placed melodies and carefully weighted rhyming couplets. There’s some pat messaging about self-forgiveness (“When You Mess Up”) and clubbing as refuge (“No One Knows We’re Dancing”). Although a decent enough return to action, Fuse lacks that special extra charge.

★★★☆☆

‘Fuse’ is released by Buzzin’ Fly/Virgin Music