Thorn in pop music's side

Everything But The Girl singer Tracey Thorn is an unlikely star, but the mum of three has made a great album, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.

There's low profile and there's low profile. And then there's Tracey Thorn. Who but the most discerning of music fan would be familiar with her name? Who but the most keen-eyed of former indie boys and girls would be remotely interested in buying Out of the Woods, her new solo album? Who but the closet Everything But The Girl fans would know that her EBTG partner is record label owner/DJ Ben Watt, that they are the parents of three children, that they live in north London, that they used to be referred to as the "Alistair Sim and Joyce Grenfell of UK indie bedsit land", and that for the past seven years, while Watt beavered away at the house music end of things, Thorn retreated into motherhood and domesticity?

The truth is, if Thorn had never ventured out again, there might not have been many questions asked in the House of Lords, and no angry letters from irate residents of Tunbridge Wells demanding her return. Yet the fact that she has returned, and with such a fine record - Out of the Woodsis officially her second solo album, a very belated follow-up to 1982's A Distant Shore- is proof of something that perhaps not even Thorn had considered: you can never successfully suppress what you really are. The turning point arrived over a year ago, when Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant cornered Thorn at a party and told her it would be a pity if she gave up singing for good.

Indeed, it seemed as if that might be the case. Thorn and Watt's Everything But The Girl project (a distinctly English concoction of Bodleian Library membership, earnest, folksy, supremely melodic indie music, floppy fringes and a prescient enthusiasm for cappuccinos) had peaked in 1996 with the album Walking Woundedand the Todd Terry remix of Missing.

CLUB CULTURE SUBSEQUENTLYlifted the profile of Everything But The Girl to new heights, but many of the unit's diehard fans didn't see or get the point and so drifted away. From 1996 onwards, EBTG failed to dent the UK Top 10, and from 1999 (with the disappointing album, Temperamental) there seemed to have been a shift in emphasis on the personal front.

By this stage, Thorn was a mother and had come to a mutual agreement with partner Watt that he would be the hunter/gatherer, while she stayed at home and raised their children, quelling her creative instincts until the time was right (eg when the youngest child started primary school). Fast forward a year, and Thorn is back in the spotlight. What's it like, then, as a 44-year-old mother of three, to be out of the kitchen?

"It isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be!" Thorn says in one of her first interviews in many years.

"When I started to make the record I had a meeting with the record company and said I didn't want to do any promotion or anything like that at all. And they said, 'well, we can talk about it nearer the time', but I said 'there's no point, I'm not doing any'. And then, when the record was finished, I reckoned I couldn't just abandon it on people's doorsteps, I had to do something.

"It isn't the end of the world spending a few days chatting to various people, is it? It wasn't a negative thing, either, this engaging with the media, it's just time consuming, and you're setting aside parts of your day when you might really want to be doing something else. Like making sandwiches for the kids."

At the start of recording, she says that she wasn't quite sure she'd be able to make a full album.

"I was gaily saying to everyone that I was going to make a record, yet at the same time thinking to myself, 'gosh, I hope I can'.

"I hadn't written anything in about six years and so you don't know what can become of a hiatus like that. If anything, it was a relief that I could come up with something," she says.

Something is an understatement. Out of the Woodsis quite a marvellous blend of Thorn's special gift for melody and words and some itchy, glitchy collaborations with the likes of Martin Wheeler (Vector Lovers), Tom Gandey (Cagedbaby) and Alex Santos.

Thorn describes the overall sound as "modernist heartbreak house mixed with early 1980s New York dance pop".

Clearly, when Watt came home from DJing, he brought back some interesting records to wake the kids up with, yet Thorn's clarity of melodic purpose is never far from the surface. The result is a wholly modern record with backbone, mettle and easy on the ear charm.

Was Out of the Woodsan attempt at establishing her own identity as a creative person outside the unit of EBTG? You bet.

"One of the things in coming back to work after you've made a conscious decision to have kids is that you feel a loss of identity. For me, coming back with an Everything But The Girl record, I was worried that the danger would be I'd lean on Ben a bit," Tracy says.

"He's remained a lot more connected to music through the years and I feared he'd be much more ready and geared up to go, that if we started work, he'd be racing along with it and I'd be lagging along in the slow lane, trying to keep up.

"So I just thought, 'no, leave him out of this one'. One of the reasons why I made this record is that I wanted to seize back some of my identity, to have me being the one in the driving seat. I collaborated with other people, but it was very much me making the final decision and orchestrating the entire project."

HOW DID ITfeel being in the driving seat? "Really good. I did feel that sense of being back in the grown-up world again, and being treated with a bit of respect - which you don't get at home with the kids!

"It's a good feeling, yes, and I'd say a lot of women feel that when you go back to work - it's nice being back in an adult working environment, hopefully having a bit of power and feeling like you can make decisions without people bursting into tears. Very refreshing."

And what about not working with Ben Watt? They've been such a unit over the past 25 years - surely not working together must have been a tad strange? "We live together and have three kids, but our lives have become a bit more separate through not working together.

"He's carried on doing work, running labels, DJing, and I've been with the kids in a more traditional work/division thing. But that's worked really well, we've worked out a balance between us that makes it easier. So the experience of making the record without him followed on from that, of making decisions myself, of not always having to make a joint decision on everything," she adds.

" I feel it's easier to work that way, creatively, rather than having to reach an agreement over the same creative path. There are compromises, sure, a shared vision, but it was very nice being able to say 'no, I like the song sounding this way'."

DESPITE THORN'S MILDprotestations, it looks as if Out of the Woodsis going to be a success.

She is mature enough, however, to realise that she's of the age, looks, demeanour and manner for it not to let it bother her too much if it isn't.

"I know I have a fan base out there who will be interested, who might like it," she reasons, "but at the same time I'm not a new pop star, I'm not current in the sense that mainstream music hinges on there being new blood all the time.

"I'm not objecting to that, either, but it's not going to be a breeze for me just to walk back after 10 years of having had a UK Top 10 hit and have people at radio stations saying 'hey, we better play this'. I'm from another generation, so I'm open-minded about what may or may not happen."

Whatever transpires, Thorn is adamant she is not supporting the album, its success or otherwise, with live shows. "I'm definitely not going to do any." Really? You said that about media interviews, remember.

"No, seriously! The motivation isn't there - the live side of it was never my favourite bit, anyway. Old-fashioned stage fright, basically. Once I stopped doing it, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. So why would I want to go back to that?"

Out of the Woodsis released through EMI on Mar 2.