Tracey Thorn, 1982

"A powerful solo debut"

It’s just been announced that Tracey Thorn’s 1982 solo mini-album A Distant Shore will be reissued by Cherry Red in October.

Known today as a reissues specialist, Cherry Red did actually release the LP (along with the first Everything But The Girl recordings) the first time round.

I reviewed the record on its first appearance in 1982. Here’s the article.

Photo ©Janette Beckman

Tracey Thorn: A DISTANT SHORE

Cherry Red

MELODY MAKER, September 4,1982

HALF the writing talent behind the sparkling Marine Girls, half the music behind Everything But The Girl (whose cover version of Cole Porter's "Night And Day" must be one of the classiest and most neglected of the recent glut of cover songs), Tracey Thorn with this solo LP stands alone both as musician and writer.

For a newcomer, it's a risky work, almost certainly less commercial than her previous outings, in themselves sadly underrated, yet it's a powerful solo debut.

At first the record comes as a shock, sounding almost like a collection of demos: just the bare bones of a record, with voice, words, and guitar. The effect though is deliberate, and the reasons and the rewards become apparent with time.

It's the songs that are important, and clothed with Tracey's unusual, richly expressive voice they need little more adornment.

It's the most extreme thing Tracey has done so far. This is a demanding record to listen to, both emotionally and intellectually. Intellectually, because ears used to a busier bombardment must concentrate hard to discern the strengths of this kind of music; emotionally, because having done so, what is revealed is such honest passion that it can't fail to hit.

The bareness of the arrangements matches the bare honesty of the words. And having taken such an uncompromising approach, the record stands and falls on the songs. All but one of the eight songs here (the exception being Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" - performed with warmth instead of coolness, and therefore wrenchingly sympathetic) are Tracey's own compositions, and they are markedly different from her earlier work.

If the Marine Girls songs (please listen to them!) were never quite the "happy little songs" they seemed to be, their pop brightness hiding sorrowful depths, they at least always exhibited a certain resilience. The voices were always in control, clear headed.

Tracey's left behind here the adolescent confidence in truth for the disillusionment that's one step to maturity; the transient sorrows of childhood for the deeper pains of adult love affairs.

The LP's called "A Distant Shore" from a line in one of the songs ("Seascape"), but it might as easily have been called "New Opened Eyes" after one of the others, because that's as much an underlying theme. These songs are an admission of vulnerability, a discovery of the confusion and ambiguity of love - and the dangers.

Tracey once said she could never imagine the possibility of writing a truly happy love song, and in these certainly she's too honest for sentimentality.

The whole LP is an exploration of emotions: there are moments of questioning, of confusion; moments of tenderness - in the singing as much as in the words; moments of quiet excitement; moments of pain; and moments where they're all mixed, into a wave of overwhelming feeling: "Tides can take me away/To a distant shore/And I don't want to be saved," ("Seascape").

Poetry was once described as emotions recollected in tranquility; here the quiet, gentle guitar sound is all tranquility but the emotions are ever-apparent, and the voice communicates a restrained turbulence that is all the more moving for that.

This record, musically understated as it is, provides a quiet and necessary counterpart to some of the choices of listening we've had. We've lived so long with melodrama that we've forgotten there are other ways of showing passion. This is a timely reminder.

Listen to Tracey

Plain Sailing is one of the best known songs from the LP, previously included on a Cherry Red compilation.

Interview with the Marine Girls

Here’s my interview with Tracey’s early band, the Marine Girls (paid subscribers only, because it’s over a year old, sorry).