Click to watch

Tracey Thorn performs "Hands Up to the Ceiling"

(Astralwerks Records)

It’s easy to think of electronic music as drivel for glowstick-waving shitbrains. After all, dance clubs are the only places that play it on the regular, and they tend to stay away from anything that’s going to make you think. But as tempting as it is to have this mindset, it just ain’t true, sister. By digging just a little deeper than the dance floor throb-fests, you’ll find some of the most exciting, subtle and beautiful music of any genre. And if you’re an especially lucky boy or girl, you’ll find Tracey Thorn’s Out of the Woods sitting on your shovel. The new solo release from Everything But the Girl’s enchanting vocalist is a complete gem.

After her and husband/bandmate Ben Watt put EBTG on hiatus to focus on raising their kids, Thorn did some songwriting here and there, eventually compiling a raw demo on a four-track cassette recorder. She gave these songs to a lucky handful of techno producers, who fleshed them out as they saw fit. As a result, the record offers much more than EBTG’s brand of club-ready pop—it’s a diverse blend of styles, including wistful balladry, moody post-punk, British folk, 1980s dance and modern house. Most importantly, it’s all held together by Thorn’s hypnotic pipes.

While every moment of Out of the Woods is richly produced, elements of Thorn’s McCartney-esque homemade approach crop up in the ballads, like the tender opening cut “Here It Comes Again” and the rainy-windowpane introspection of “Hands up to the Ceiling.” The former is three minutes of pop bliss that would grab Sir Paul’s attention, replete with a string quartet, gentle keyboards, pizzicato plucking and lines like, “The sun coming through the rain is more precious than gold.”

On the more dance-inspired tracks, it’s the same story: imaginative production wrinkles that underline Thorn’s wonderful songs. On “A-Z,” an ode to gay teenagers getting bullied at school, her voice slinks around a ghostly synthesizer line, delivering couplets laden with poignancy, i.e. “You’ve been balanced on a knife/Will the city save your life?/Your life is waiting for you/Your love is waiting for you.”

With Out of the Woods, Tracey Thorn has shown that she’s more than just an enthralling vocalist (which would be enough for me). She’s also one hell of a songwriter, and undisputable proof that dance music isn’t all about fluorescent binkies and dilated pupils. In her hands, it’s a gosh darned art form.