Everything But The Girl Amplified Heart

Everything But The Girl Amplified Heart

Also Available Amplified Heart Deluxe Edition 

Get It At Discogs

Though a few songs here can be classified as “pretty But uneventful,” most of Amplified Heart is breathtakingly melodic and beautiful. Led by the sultry vocals of Tracy Thorn, this somber album paints vivid scenes of romantic longing and confusion. Ben Watt constructs the seductively sparse musical settings, and he’s also a fine singer himself who duets with Thorn effectively on the desperate “Walking To You” and “25th December,” a lonely acoustic song. Other evocative and catchy highlights are “Troubled Mind” and “Get Me,” while “We Walk The Same Line” is a rare pledge of devotion on an album of sad relationship songs. However, the real showstopper here is the devastatingly sad “Missing,” which later became a hit single when it was remixed by Todd Terry. For the record, I much prefer this version, which has a haunted emptiness that the other one doesn’t quite capture, though Terry’s more danceable version foreshadowed the sound that Everything But The Girl (EBTG) would further explore on Walking Wounded. With Watt having overcome Churg-Strauss Syndrome, which required four operations and had him near death, and with Thorn’s recent work with Massive Attack having increased the duo’s profile, EBTG emerged triumphant with their finest release.