Description
The British duos career appeared dead in the water when Todd Terrys club remix of Missing, the lead single from their 1994 album Amplified Heart, swept across American dancefloors, eventually carrying the song to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100their first U.S. top 10 singleand paving the way for their reinvention as trip-hop/drumnbass fusionists on 1996s Walking Wounded, the most successful album of their career. No one expected Terrys remix to take off the way it didcertainly not Everything But the Girls UK label, Blanco y Negro, which had summarily dropped them a few months before.
Across the record, virtually all of the fluff of their previous albumtwinkling digital keys, flugelhorn and soprano-sax solos, reverb plusher than the seats of a luxury SUVhas been banished. The duos newfound minimalism came in part from Massive Attack, who, in the summer of 1993, had sent Thorn a cassette of demos for their second album and asked her to sing on them. But where the resulting Protection was foggy, skunky, stoned, Everything But the Girls approach to reduction sparkles. Pared down to guitar, standup bass, drum kit, and the occasional programmed beat, Amplified Heart champions the virtues of economy without sacrificing any of the groups habitual luster. There are few elements in play, but every one sounds like a million bucks. And by rubbing away the generic sheen of high-end production that smothered Worldwide, the duos music breathes anew.
Far beyond the impact of Todd Terrys remix, the sound of Missing, and that of Amplified Heart in general, has resonated widely. Its careful strain of folktronica set the precedent for Beth Ortons Trailer Park two years later, and then a whole raft of tuneful, trip-hop-adjacent sounds. Fifteen years after the albums release, its gauzy mix of guitars and drums resurfaced on the xxs debut album. And Everything But the Girl themselves turned out to have the world ahead of them: two more albums as a duo, three children, parallel solo careers, and several acclaimed memoirs. The narrative around them is of a group rescued from the brink; its one of pop musics great comeback stories. But the genius of Amplified Heart is that none of that was foreordained. Here, all you can hear is relief at being alive, and the hunger to hang on a little longer. via AllMusic
Label: Buzzin’ Fly Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Reissued: 2019 / Original Release: 1994
Genre: Pop
Style: Indie Pop
File under: Alternative / Indie / Pop
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