| Bbc |
 The quote accompanying Love and Its Opposite is mildly terrifying. “When I was young, I imagined middle age to be a kind of comfort zone,” says Thorn, “but in fact, having got here, I feel it's more of a war zone. The songs are where I dump all that s*** so that I can get on with my life without jumping off a bridge.” And though this hardly qualifies as an inducement to listen, there’s something delightfully honest about it. It’s almost anti-press.
Such painfully spare sentiment is echoed in both the lyrics and the pared-down arrangements on Thorn’s latest, on which she’s worked with musicians as disparate as Hot Chip’s Al Doyle, Swedish alt-pop’s Jens Lekman and Nashville singer-songwriter Cortney Tidwell. But the Ewan Pearson-produced, back-to-basics approach does mean those honest lyrics stand out more, and seem even starker. On Singles Bar she asks, “Can you guess my age in this light?” over a simple, swaying twang, before revealing how she “laid on her back for a Hollywood wax”. It might be that it’s simply too honest for some....full text |
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| Guardian |
| If Tracey Thorn's last solo album, 2007's Out of the Woods, saw her stepping out on the dancefloor, its follow-up finds her nestled on the sofa, watching daytime soap operas and devouring chick-lit. Her lyrics leave no romantic cliche unexplored, travelling from commitment issues (Long White Dress) to marital breakdown (Oh! the Divorces), via the tragedy of dating again (Singles Bar), the horror of realising that your teenager wears your frocks better than you do (Hormones), and the recurring stagnation of long-term relationships (Swimming). The music, too, is the stuff of romcom soundtracks: acoustic in mood, gently pulsing, shot with silvery strings, occasionally stumbling into schmaltz. Sounds awful? Well, no, because Thorn's voice, rich and smooth as the most expensive chocolate truffle, brings each story to genuine life and invests it with heart-snagging emotion. Even so, the album's high point is a curveball: a duet with Jens Lekman, covering Lee Hazlewood's Come on Home to Me, that is chilling in its desolation....full text |
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| Boston |
| On her gently magnificent third solo album, Tracey Thorn — the beguiling voice of Everything But the Girl — tackles serious big-girl issues. If you have ever cast a critical eye in the mirror, been in love and then out of love, or observed the cycle from a distance, “Love and Its Opposite’’ has a song for you. The 10 tracks — eight originals and two covers — may be universal in sentiment, but Thorn pins down the specifics, tackling life’s big passages from marriage to divorce to parenthood to menopause. And she does it by focusing on the small moments. Whether it’s the mani-pedi and bikini wax in the tragicomic “Singles Bar,’’ the ache of the afternoon handoff of the kids at the playground of “Oh the Divorces!,’’ or the fears of stagnancy that seize the mind in “Late in the Afternoon,’’ Thorn observes and interprets with a crystal clarity. The album’s apex comes with the rueful “Kentish Town,’’ as retraced steps do not translate into recaptured emotions. Thorn bolsters all of this with a surfeit of appealing melodies, arrangements that blend electronic and acoustic elements with stately elegance, and that mesmerizing voice of hers. (Out tomorrow)...full text |
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