50 albums: 1985 - Love Not Money by Everything But The Girl

I've previously blogged about how I eventually listened to Tracey Thorn's first solo album, but even having finally succumbed and been utterly enchanted by A Distant Shore, I've still approached the Everything But The Girl catalogue with a little trepidation.

My natural aversion to success (aka 'snobbery'), that I've touched on a couple of times before in this series, and a concern that well financed music of the 80s will surely be ruined by being buried in the shimmery, synthy gloss of over-production, has meant that I have been tiptoeing slowly but steadily through EBGT's career.

I think I may like Love Not Money even more than Eden, it has a couple of tracks that made me wince (Sean being the most notable), but most of the album is rather lovely and Tracey's voice is just astoundingly rich and warm, that I'm fairly certain she could pull of that supposedly most difficult vocal challenge, the phone book, without any problem at all.

(play on YouTube)

Nice little bonus of a cover of The Pretenders Kid to top it all off too...

(play on YouTube)

... but the original is much, much better of course

(play on YouTube)

50 films and 50 albums