EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL
FUSE
BUZZIN’ FLY
★★★★★
“Do you sing to heal the broken hearted, faces to the wall?” Tracey Thorn wonders on Karaoke, Fuse’s final track. “Do you sing to get the party started, or not at all?” They’re questions she’s probably asked herself, given Thorn and husband Ben Watt have taken 24 years to reunite in song, but she answers both in the affirmative. Listening to Temperamental’s belated follow-up, one reaches the same conclusion. Neither miseryfest nor hedonistic rave, Everything But The Girl’s 11th long-player confirms the pair’s ability to combine pleasure and pain, if not in equal measures.