It was 24 years since your last solo album. It’s been quite a parenthesis there, hasn’t it?
Well the kids are a little older now and at school, so there was more time to think about doing some music again. And I realised I missed singing.
Wikipedia says, Tracey Thorn is best known as being one half of the duo “Everything But The Girl”, should it be updated?
Probably not. That’s still what I’m BEST known for!
Did “Everything but the girl” project stop in the last century?
Ooooh I like that, the past century. Makes us sound a hundred years old. Cool. I guess we may make a record again one day. It’s very hard to predict the future.
What does Ben Watt think about this work? Has he collaborated or influenced the songs or the production in any way?
No he didn’t collaborate at all. He was helpful in suggesting a few people I might think about working with. And he listened to some of the early demos, but didn’t say much, because I had told him I wanted to do my own record and not be too influenced by his ideas!
Could you explain how the making of the album was? It looks like there has been a great production.
Some of the songs were collaborations where the other person (Tom Gandey, Alex Santos, for instance) created a backing track and then I wrote a song over the top. Others were songs I had written at home on the guitar or piano, and then the producer (Ewan Pearson on most of the tracks) helped me to realise the recording. I bought some musical instruments at e-bay. Um, I bought a harmonium. And an omnichord. And a glockenspiel. And a melodica. They’re not THAT strange, really, but they’re not an acoustic guitar are they? I just wanted to experiment at home making a different kind of noise.
You’ve got one of the most personal voices in pop music, will be easy for the listener to feel the differences between the group and your work as single?
Well, all the EBTG records were quite different from each other, and this one is different again. My voice is the kind of link between all the records, but there is always a sense of the music moving on, experimenting with different genres.
The list of collaborators is really amazing, was it your decision from the beginning to work with all of them?
I e-mailed all of them to see if anyone would be into doing a collaboration with me. I didn’t really expect them all to say yes! So then I had an embarrassment of riches, in terms of having so much input from so many great people.
I suppose great festivals will be fighting for you. Will we be able to enjoy your concerts soon?
No I’m not going to be doing concerts at all. Sorry.
The latest album of your group was rather influenced by the electronic tendencies. Nowadays it seems there’s a fusion between electronic and guitars. Have you go on this evolution in your music?
Is there a fusion between electronic and guitars? It seems to me in England at the moment that guitar bands are very dominant, and the dance/electronica scene has been pushed underground again.
Any special song in your album? Does any of them inspired by a wonderful story?
The album is called ‘Out of the wood’ because I have been in the darkness in the sense of being out of the limelight, and in a kind of obscurity for a few years. So in that sense its about me coming out of the woods. Also, I noticed when I’d finished the record, that there are lots of lyrics about people coming out into the light, or the light coming through the tress, or people getting to a place where things were gonna be easier etc etc. I realised I had written a lot of songs about people in some kind of trouble, but focussing on how they were gonna survive and move forwards. Out into the light again. It’s a kind of theme to the record, without me having realised it at the time.
Entrevista cuya traducción aparecería publicada en AUX Magazine en primavera de 2008.