A January 1995 episode of Top Of The Pops came up on the repeats on BBC4 recently including this performance of Protection, Tracey Thorn and Massive Attack in imperious form. Protection is one of the 90s best songs, a genuine jaw dropper on first and subsequent listens and a song its impossible to turn off once it starts. Tracey's voice is perfect for the song, her singing a perfect blend of strength and hurt and her lyrics, switching the gender around mid- song, spin the song around. Protection, the album, came out in September1994. Following up Blue Lines was never going to be easy but Protection mainly manages it with the title track and others- Karmacoma, Sly, Better Things, Three and Spying Glass, some of their best songs. The cover of Light My Fire less so maybe. But Protection is the towering achievement, a song that even mid- 90s Top Of The Pops can't ruin.
Tracey's songs and recordings outside Everything But The Girl, both solo and with other people, are many and various. I thought, having listened to Protection a few times and then heading to the Andrew Weatherall remix of Tracey's Sister from 2018, that a Tracey Thorn solo/ collaboration mix might work. And it does.
Protection came out in 1995, one of the singles/ songs of the 90s. The 12" came with this Brian Eno remix, a ten minute ambient affair. It had already been the lead song on the album Protection, released in 1994 and an obvious choice for a single.
Raise The Roof was a 2007 Tracey Thorn single, and on her solo album Out Of The Woods. Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan's psyche outfit, twist it into new shapes and spaces.
Sister was the lead single from Tracey's 2018 album Record, a song with Corinne Bailey Rae and Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa on board. Tracey sings the line 'And I fight like a girl' and makes it sound like the toughest, most menacing line she's ever sung. Andrew Weatherall 's remix (and the dub version too) are ten minutes of late period Weatherall brilliance, chuggy, dubby remix splendour.
Moving Dub is from No Protection, the Mad Professor dub version of Massive Attack's Protection. Moving Dub, with Tracey on vocals, is Better Things sent through the dub blender.
Night Time is a cover of a song by The Xx, released as a standalone solo EP in 2011. It has husband Ben Watt on guitar. The Xx asked Tracey to cover it for a compilation of covers of their songs by their favourite artists they were planning. It never happened except for Tracey's cover. Drums, programming and production were courtesy of Ewan Pearson.
Tracey Thorn's autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen is turning out to be a surprisingly good read. I've never been a huge fan of Everything But The Girl but they've always been there, on the outer fringes of my musical radar. Her story is well written, self deprecating, honest and full of the politics and passions that came out of punk and produced such a wide variety of post-punk bands. Even without a detailed knowledge of EBTG or The Marine Girls, it's an engaging book and she comes across as a real person who ended up making records and being in a band. Interestingly, having also read Viv Albertine's book recently, womens' stories of life in the music industry have a very different tone from many of the mens'- more circumspect and less bullish, more about the process and personal politics of being creative in daily situations with other people. She writes about the contradictions of being in a group sometimes viewed as sappy or sissy, playing weedy jazz influenced music (which they saw as modern and progressive) while also coming across in interviews as spikey, defensive and having very strongly held indie/punk beliefs.
This was an EBTG single from the mid 80s with Johnny Marr playing popping up on harmonica.
Ben Watt, partner in both senses, had a dance music career in the 90s and his label Buzzin' Fly put out several fine compilation cds. I remembered this song, which I bought on 12", where over Ben's Chicago deep house grooves Estelle puts in a spoken word vocal about shoplifiting and growing up on violent streets. Really good.
