Love and its Opposite
Tracey Thorn
This is the record that all great singer/songwriters should make when they’ve stopped trying to be stars and just want to make art that expresses what goes on in their heads. Described by Thorn as “a record about the person I am now and the people around me ... about real life after 40,” Love and its Opposite plays as an album created not to get radio plays, not to rock the next party, but for the simplest reason that music exists — for the listener to empathetically connect with the person singing. On first listen, you’ll notice the lack of beat-driven intention that 2007’s Out of the Woods had as its foundation. But it’s on the second and third listens that the gentle melodies and painfully specific lyrics become the exclusive draw to press play again upon the disc’s completion, and underscores what made Tracey and Everything But The Girl such an enduring force: their ability to maintain an unparalleled level of lyrical intimacy across any musical platform. Essentially the album is a snapshot of her own mind — how she perceives her children, her marriage, the people around her and close to her — all while conveying it through her unrivaled voice and hooky vocal dynamics. She addresses love not as a lovesick girl, but as a woman who’s experienced the dynamic realities of it and understands it, not idealizes it. This album should come with a leather couch, a timer — and an inflated mental health practitioner’s invoice.
