There was something magical about Tracey Thorn’s and Ben Watt’s return to live performance together as Everything But The Girl after a 25-year hiatus. The intimate MOTH Club in Hackney was the perfect setting for their two-day residency, with its stage backdrop of gold tinsel foregrounding giant, glittery MOTH letters and its shallow, glitter encrusted arches leading down to the stage area. Plus the military crests all around the room from its heritage as the club for the Memorable Order of Tin Hats, for ex-military to help colleagues in need, who meet under the motto ‘True Comradeship, Mutual Help and Sound Memory’, a sentiment which could have been applied to the spirit of the evening.
What better way to begin the first set of their second night than with the Cole Porter classic, Night and Day, with their lilting, jazz-flavoured interpretation, just Watt’s guitar and Thorn’s vocals, relaxed and carefully crafted, appropriately their first single, released in 1982, fifty years after Fred Astaire’s original recording.
This set the tone perfectly for a journey combing their forty plus years repertoire as duo and solo songwriters, through songs they rarely played – ‘… ones we never do,’ as Thorn put it – and those more familiar. They imbued the evening with the essence of their style, a touch of gently upbeat, latin jazz rhythms and chord structures, a wistful poignancy in their lyrics countered by a window in to the darker side of reflections on relationships.
Adding further texture to several numbers were their son, Blake Watt on guitar and vocals, and Rex Horan, a core member of the Neil Cowley Trio, on an imposing, upright double bass.
Naturally associated with an innate sense of style in their songs and presentation, they paced both sets with an understated attention to detail that gelled with the rapt audience. Loaded, crafted words drifted and caught the ear. From Mine, ‘… the winds of mischance … she swims in the dark … unsteady footsteps …’ mixed the poetic with the unsettling.
Ben recounted how a solo concert at the QEH was cancelled at the breakout of covid, so this was his first chance to play his rueful, folk flavoured Hendra, led in by Horan’s gravelly, bowed bass. He movingly reflected that Winter’s Eve was about getting through dark times, saying that after eighteen months of bad health he was glad to be able to play and sing again, chiming with the line, ‘Everybody deserves a last reprieve’.
Thorn told of her debt to Bridget St John whom she’d seen play at Cafe Oto eighteen months earlier, inspiring her to think about performing again, and she with Blake together touchingly played her Song to Keep You Company. In an article she wrote for New Statesman magazine in 2023, she explained how this serendipitous connection goes back to her Marine Girls days when a journalist compared her to Bridget St John (*link below).
For those familiar with Thorn’s early recordings, it was a delight to hear her revisit the gently lyrical, Small Town Girl while, by way of contrast, their surprising cover of Charli xcx’s I Might Say Something Stupid sat well with the flow. Bringing focus to the metropolis, Thorn’s solo song, Smoke, ‘about a family growing up in London’ had Ben on synth-tinged keyboards and Horan’s bass giving an extra, urban edge.
Blake introduced songwriting doyenne Adrianne Lenker’s wistful Anything, articulated beautifully by his vocal harmonies with Thorn, while Ben coaxed out a fluid, expressive guitar solo, as he would also on Frost and Fire. Blake was given the space to feature his song, Removed, from his band, Family Stereo, and Ben’s Irene had Horan switch to keyboards and Blake take on challenge of the guitar spot which, as Ben pointed out, on the recording was played by Alan Sparhawk from Low.
Before they tied up the evening with Mirrorball and a couple of heartfelt encores brought on by standing ovations, Thorn, embracing the transfixed audience, generously said that this was ‘an amazing moment. I don’t take it for granted, and you’ve been part of it!’ The evening confirmed that Everything But The Girl had not lost any of their compelling craft in the interim, had retained their freshness and, if anything, had grown and gained.
BAND
Tracey Thorn: vocals
Ben Watt: guitar, keyboards, vocals
Rex Horan: double bass, keyboards
Blake Watt: guitar, vocals
———————-
Set 1:
Night and Day (Cole Porter cover)
No Difference
Mine
Hendra (Ben Watt song)
Song to Keep You Company (Bridget St. John cover)
Anything (Adrianne Lenker cover)
Smoke (Tracey Thorn song)
Winter’s Eve (Ben Watt song)
Single
Set 2:
I might say something stupid (Charli xcx cover)
Run a Red Light
Frost and Fire
North Marine Drive (Ben Watt song)
Small Town Girl (Tracey Thorn song)
Removed (Family Stereo cover)
Irene (Ben Watt song)
Downhill Racer
Mirrorball
Encores:
Nothing Left to Lose
25th December
