Everything but the Girl Fuse Review: A World-Weary Comeback

The duo’s first album in nearly 24 years finds them returning to their craft but not exactly returning to form.

Everything but the Girl, Fuse
Photo: Edward Bishop

A weary malaise permeates Everything but the Girl’s Fuse, and it evokes the same abject feelings of primordial decay and eventual rebirth as fellow U.K. electronic icons Portishead’s Third. Like that album, Fuse finds its creators returning to their craft after an extended hiatus—in this case, nearly 24 years—but not exactly returning to form. Instead, it’s more like a retooling of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt’s previous sound.

The album leans heavily into the idea that we’re all living in the middle of one long, drawn-out apocalypse. Opener “Nothing Left to Lose,” with its gyrating, dubstep-ready bassline, sets in motion a subdued rave for the end of the world, as Thorn suggests an encroaching finality with the lines “Kiss me while the world decays/Kiss me while the music plays.” Later, “Forever” doubles down on that pessimistic attitude as the singer asks, with a hint of uncertainty, “Who will be around when everything’s burned down?”

Elsewhere on Fuse, “Run a Red Light,” which starts and finishes with the faint clangs of static noise that’s paired with an elegant piano melody, finds Thorn in full lounge-singer mode as she huskily begs the listener to break traffic laws in the face of impending doom, all in an effort to “forget the morning.” This sentiment is echoed on “Caution to the Wind,” which implores us to, well, throw caution to the wind.

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The rest of Fuse is primarily concerned with self-reflection and regret, of squandered opportunities and painful memories that continue to linger on, and does so with a respectable amount of grace and reticence. Thorn ruminates on the death of her mother on “Loss” by first claiming that she’s lost a “perfect job,” then her “faith,” and, finally, her “best friend,” and each misfortune registers with a pronounced sense of grief. On the album’s morose and minimalist closer, “Karaoke,” she asks herself what ultimate purpose her art serves: “Do you sing to heal the broken hearted?/Or do you sing to get the party started?”

Ironically, there are a few notable major missteps that the duo makes when it comes to addressing past mistakes. Take “When You Mess Up,” a sullen ballad about how we’re all susceptible to making an error or two and should pardon ourselves for any transgressions that our actions may have caused others. It’s a thesis statement that suits the album’s introspective nature but gets a bit lost in the woods when Thorn claims, with some oddly mixed effects on her vocals, that “you’re never perfect in a world of microaggressions.”

Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.

Score: 
 Label: Verve  Release Date: April 21, 2023  Buy: Amazon

Paul Attard

Paul Attard is a New York-based lifeform who enjoys writing about experimental cinema, rap/pop music, games, and anything else that tickles their fancy. Their writing has also appeared in MUBI Notebook.

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