Everything but the humdrum

Now ‘on a bit of a roll’ after a comeback three years ago, 1980s indie star Tracey Thorn is finding middle age less sedate than younger fans might assume

FROM DOYENNE of indie bedsit-land to admired voice for an older generation of women? What a long, not-so-strange trip it has been for Tracey Thorn, co-founder of Everything But the Girl and, latterly, creator of some of the smartest dance- folktronica around. Three years ago, following a lengthy sabbatical when she muted her musical instincts to raise three children with her partner, Ben Watt, the other founding member of Everything But the Girl, Thorn released her comeback album, Out of the Woods.

Despite being lauded to the hilt, the album more or less disappeared when Thorn insisted on not playing gigs to support it. That stance hasn't changed – there is little motivation, says the 47-year- old, for getting into a tour bus while children remain at home to be tucked in and kissed goodnight – despite the fact that her new album, Love and Its Opposite, is receiving the kind of plaudits many reluctant pop stars would jump out of retirement for.

That Love and Its Oppositearrives so relatively soon after her previous album is both a pleasure and a surprise. "I got on a bit of a roll," Thorn says, "and I demoed songs on acoustic guitar and piano. Because Out of the Woodswas quite an electronic affair, I thought it would be interesting to do a quiet type of album. I suppose I wanted to show people what I could do."

Love and Its Oppositeis something of a treasure, connecting with the current fondness for indie-pop-folktronica (of which Everything But the Girl were pioneers) as much as with the concerns of those about the same age as its creator. A crucial feature of the CD is that, after 28 years of living together, Thorn and Watt – who now occupies himself with record-label, DJ'ing and producing duties – married last year. How significant was the decision, given that they had been viewed as long married anyway?

“I don’t wish to sound unromantic about it,” says Thorn, “because on a personal level it was very significant, but there is also the thing that when you’ve been together for a long time, marriage, in some ways, is quite insignificant. People keep asking me, ‘Oh, have things changed since you got married?’, and the obvious answer is, no, of course it hasn’t.

“It was a slightly spontaneous, impulsive decision to do it, to be honest. We had been nagged at quite a bit ever since we had the kids – you know, ‘You’ve really got to have something on paper,’ that kind of thing. And I suppose a little adult voice in our heads was telling us the same thing. But there was no grand gesture about it, and I don’t think it necessarily represents anything major.”

Yet this re-commitment amid the general debris of relationships – love and its opposites, indeed – lends Thorn's new songs depth, conviction and accuracy. "I reckon that, subconsciously, the stuff I'm writing about on these songs was happening around me," she says. "Friends were breaking up. I was getting older and starting to see some of the difficult things that were taking place around me. So, in the face of that, perhaps our wedding was a gesture of celebration, at the very least, and a moment of myself and Ben saying a positive thing."

The new songs, though, reflect on the fact that middle age is not as sedate or as stress free as teenagers and twentysomethings might assume. “Younger people are entirely wrapped up in their own world, and, as a mother, I think that’s right and proper,” Thorn says. “But they have a tendency to think that anyone older than themselves has disengaged on some level and is just living a completely humdrum life; that they’re switched off, with no deep emotions coursing through their veins. I remember when I was a lot younger, I used to think that. I worried about running out of stuff to write about when I got older, when – or so I thought – everything stops happening. But then some of my married friends starting separating, and I thought that was as dramatic as anything else happening when I was in my 20s. It’s a rich source of material that gets overlooked.”

She is also trying to present an authentic voice for women of her age who are feeling the pressure to maintain youthfulness and be as relevant as ever. “That’s all great, but important female stuff can be left out, don’t you think?” she says. “So I thought I’d include some of that, and see if it freaks people if I dare to mention the menopause. Which it might, but that’s good, because, well, isn’t music supposed to do that? It’s easy to say how wonderful we all look in our 50s, but let’s not leave out some of the tricky stuff.”

Love and Its Oppositeis on PIAS