Tracey Thorn – A Distant Shore: Album Review

By Gareth Allen on 28th November 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

Tracey Thorn’s first solo album, A Distant Shore, from 1982, is reissued with bonus demo tracks and sleeve notes by the artist.

Release date: Available now

Label: Cherry Red Records

Format: CD/Vinyl

Tracey Thorn successfully combines writing acclaimed books and columns, a solo music career, and continuing to make music with Ben Watt in Everything But The Girl. Cherry Red Records have reissued Tracey Thorn’s first solo album, A Distant Shore. A pivotal album, that followed on from singles and albums with the Marine Girls and came before the debut Everything But the Girl (EBTG) album Eden. This new release of A Distant Shore excitingly adds in four solo demos of songs that would later be re-recorded for Eden.

reminiscing….

As a way into this review of A Distant Shore, just a few words on my musical journey in respect to Tracey Thorn, Ben Watt and EBTG. I heard the debut EBTG album Eden, on the radio, and fell in love with its cool jazz ambiance and emotionally and socially aware lyrics, and immediately went out and bought it on vinyl. Then I discovered Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt had both prior to EBTG put out solo records, and eagerly got hold of those, and loved the very personal and heartfelt style of songwriting they had both developed.

Then I saw EBTG live at the Queen Margaret Union at Glasgow University, where their excellent band included June Miles-Kingston on drums and backing vocals, an amazing musician who played with the Fun Boy Three and the Communards and many others, alongside Phil Moxham on bass from the brilliant Young Marble Giants, and Neil Scott on guitar. The way they radically reworked and attacked, what had been a bossa nova styled Each and Every One on Eden, with an adrenalin driven yet nuanced indie rock charge, was just incredible.

I must also add from those early days, Tracey Thorn’s passionate and pitch perfect vocal on Working Week’s early single Venceremos (We Will Win), duetting with Robert Wyatt on a soul-jazz classic and hymn to the struggle for social justice and solidarity. These then were artists with wide musical horizons I would continue to follow with interest up to the present day as they have embraced a wide palette of musical styles.

initial thoughts

So, let’s begin our look at A Distant Shore, with opening track Small Town Girl. With a beautifully lilting guitar accompaniment, Tracey Thorn’s voice melds folk and jazz phrasing, to give gentle expression to a story of navigating a new world of experiences and relationships. The natural directness of the song and performance is captured perfectly on this recording. The album, featuring just voice and guitar, was in fact recorded in Pat Bermingham’s garden shed studio, and there is marvellously delicate and dulcet ambiance, that conversely puts the directness and emotionally charged nature of this song, and others on the album, fully into the foreground.

On Simply Couldn’t Care, one is able to hear the tapped rhythm of the guitar, and chord changes, as if being in the studio itself. The guitar rhythms add a blues tinge to the subtle questioning in the lyrics of how to maintain identity within a relationship. Seascape that follows is an impressionistic reflection on the redemption of loving someone, with a completely arresting lyrical couplet at the conclusion of the song:

“Thought I knew the sea and all its secrets too

But it’s different in November with you”

a beguiling triumph

The cover of the Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale is a beguiling triumph. The vocal is perfectly understated and gets underneath Lou Reed’s lyrics to bring out their underlying poignancy. It is a performance that plays a respectful homage to Nico’s original vocal, while setting out a completely authentic new interpretation of the song. Dreamy, that follows on, has a floating, wistful quality, as Tracey Thorn’s voice drifts through the rise and fall contours of the song. There is a sadness and longing that the vocal captures and intimately shares with the listener.

Plain Sailing is in many ways the centrepiece of the album. Written when Tracey Thorn was 19, it has a striking wiseness and empathy about the trajectory of relationships. Musically it winningly combines a DIY indie ethic with flickers of soul and jazz. The final lines of the song will stop you in your tracks:

“Tempting to think now it will all be plain sailing

Old enough now to know there’s no such thing”

New Opened Eyes and Too Happy close the album. New Opened Eyes adds a layered guitar approach to the album’s musical palette, with exquisite guitar embellishments, as the lyrics capture the raw emotion of the realisation that a relationship is ending. Too Happy has one of the most heartfelt vocals on the album, creating the sense of a confessional with a trusted friend. It has a resonance of the great Billie Holiday. It is that good.

bonus features -1

The bonus tracks resulted from Tracey Thorn finding a box of old cassettes in her garage. They contained a song recorded at the same time as the other tracks on the album, that didn’t make it onto the finished release, called Lucky Day. In addition, from a subsequent recording session in the shed, demos of four solo songs that were subsequently re-recorded for the debut EBTG album, Eden: Another Bridge; Even So; The Spice of Life; and Fascination.

These are captivating additions. Lucky Day is quite upbeat musically and interestingly has overtones of the Marine Girls. The four demos that would eventually end up re-recorded for Eden are fully formed songs, that work brilliantly in these pared back guitar and voice arrangements. The arrangements also feel to be pointing towards how the songs would evolve on Eden, particularly with the elegantly layered vocals, that add some charming harmonies. Fascination is a standout both lyrically and musically, with Tracey Thorn’s voice sharing a complexity of feelings and questioning, in the most compelling of vocal phrasing, that has a timing that is in complete synchronicity with the emotions being expressed. It is completely sublime.

bonus features -2

Also included in the reissue is a booklet containing a very personal essay by Tracey Thorn, that sets the album in its context, together with the lyrics to all the songs, including the bonus demo tracks. The original cover art drawing by fellow member of the Marine Girls, Jane Fox, is also faithfully reproduced. The album has been remastered and the results are very good indeed, enhancing the musical intimacy of the original recordings.

This is such a great reissue, that it can’t be recommended highly enough. Great songwriting and affecting performances, that are truly moving, with a gift for melody, and lyrics that reflect relationships and their attendant emotions in the most authentic and genuine of ways. The newly discovered demos are a fabulous find, rounding off this excellent and sympathetic reissue.