Tracey Thorn

One of the most enduring English singer/songwriters since the early '80s, Tracey Thorn began making music with the all-female quartet Marine Girls, a minimalist pop group that released a pair of albums -- Beach Party and Lazy Ways -- inspired by Young Marble Giants and the Raincoats. She recorded A Distant Shore, a relatively moody, if similarly skeletal solo album, for Cherry Red in 1983, and around that time she met Ben Watt -- who was also signed to Cherry Red -- and formed a partnership as Everything But the Girl. From 1984 through 1999, Thorn and Watt released ten albums that shifted from indie pop to slick sophisti-pop to downtempo club music. Shortly after having twin daughters together, they put EBTG on ice, as Watt DJed and operated his Buzzin' Fly label while Thorn stayed home with the children. (They had a third child, a boy, in 2001.) After several years of inactivity, Thorn began writing again and recorded her second solo album, Out of the Woods, which was released in early 2007. Instead of working with Watt, she collaborated with a number of producers, including Ewan Pearson, Charles Webster, Cagedbaby, Sasse, and Martin Wheeler. Pearson returned as sole producer of her 2010 effort Love and Its Opposite, an album released by Watt's Strange Feeling label. Throughout the years, she has guested on songs by a number of groups, including the Style Council, the Go-Betweens, Massive Attack, and Tiefschwarz. In 2012, Thorn released Tinsel and Lights, a holiday album featuring songs by contemporary composers. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi