INKPOT MUSIC REVIEWS: EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL, BEST OF (Warner, 1996)

RATING: **˝**

Missing
Driving
Old Friends
One Place
I Don't Want To Talk About It
Love Is Strange
The Only Living Boy In New York
Apron Strings
When All's Well
Another Bridge
Each And Every One
Rollercoaster
Driving
Better Things
Protection

Everything But The Girl
The Best Of Everything But The Girl (1996)
EMI Records
[57:50]

by Clarissa Oon

EVERYTHING BUT A DIRECTION
In a recent interview with Brit magazine Q, Tracey Thorn describes COVERS, Everything But The Girl's 1992 EP of cover versions, as "a total loss of ideas." She goes on to talk about 1991's WORLDWIDE, "If we'd been honest, we'd have said, 'Perhaps we shouldn't record this, because we're not totally convinced about what we're doing.' "

Which explains a lot. Everything But The Girl's new "Best Of" album (released by their former record company to cash in on their recent success) shows up all the problems of their ten year stint with Warner Records. Dull. Bland. Lacking ideas. And most importantly, lacking a sense of direction about the kind of music they wanted to produce.

From the watered-down jazz of early '80s songs like "Each and Every One," to the synth-manufactured pop-soul melodies of the WORLDWIDE album, the most you could say about Everything But The Girl was either that they sounded like another Swing Out Sister or that they sounded "yuppie." And this greatest hits album plonks all that easy listening gloss in your face.

But something about it lifts it from the ranks of a Class 95 FM album. That's when Tracey Thorn opens her mouth. I don't know why, but she reminds me of Karen Carpenter. Two different voices, two different sounds, but both criminally slaughtered by mediocre music.

Skip the earlier songs when her voice was still raw. But from the 1988 cover of "I Don't Want To Talk About It" onwards, her voice takes on a beautiful clarity and honesty, its resonant alto setting her apart from hordes of whispery waifs. (Of course, the song was later murdered by overplay on commerical radio)

With a good song like "The Only Living Boy In New York," Everything But The Girl can turn out good stuff, Tracey and partner Ben Watt doing justice to Paul Simon's elegy of urban desolation. Is it any wonder that the better songs on the album are covers or Tracey's collaboration with the Bristol trip-hop group Massive Attack?

The only time Thorn and Watt get it right themselves is with "Rollercoaster", taken off 1994's AMPLIFIED HEART -- noted for being the first album on which Everything But The Girl attempted to write what they meant, and not what they thought their record company or their audience wanted to hear.

This greatest hits album is strictly for fans who want to chart the evolution of their sound. For the rest, just go buy AMPLIFIED HEART.

In the bathroom, Clarissa Oon tries to sound like Tracey Thorn.

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