Return Of The Smalltown Girl

Has there been a female singer in the last twenty years with a voice as sad, distinctive, unaffected and English as Tracey Thorn's?

I've listened to it and loved it for more than a quarter of a century now - from the wilfully artless student days of The Marine Girls through the beautifully simple acoustic sketches of her solo debut 'A Distant Shore' along Everything But The Girl's melodic trail through indie jazz to torch balladry and House and onto her collaborations with Massive Attack, Deep Dish and German electro duo Tiefschwarz (the excellent dance track 'Damage', her last release).

Terrific news then that, 25 years after that first solo album, Tracey has recorded a follow up 'Out Of The Woods' which is released on March 5th.

We are promised "bed-sit disco torch songs"- so no change there then - recorded with a veritable who's who of dance music producers. As Tracey writes...

'....my main collaborator/producer is Ewan Pearson, and we've done seven tracks together. A cover of Arthur Russell's Get Around To It, featuring some wonky freakout sax from Gabe of The Rapture. A new song called It's All True, co-written with Sasse and Darshan Jesrani (Metro Area), which is pure early 80's New York dance pop. A piano ballad which Ewan says sounds like "The Carpenters on acid". Also a cover of King's Cross by the Pet Shop Boys, which isn't on the actual album (had too many songs!), but will be available as a bonus track somewhere, and downloadable from iTunes'

Can't wait.

Here's a sample to tide you over

Tracey Thorn - 'Grand Canyon'
There's a great interview with Tracey in this month's The Word magazine - website here.

Tracey's Myspace page? Here.

Pre-order the album here.