Everything But The Girl- Amplified Heart

I don’t particularly like “mellow” or “chill” music. To me, music is great for eliciting emotion, and “chill” is less of an emotion than a mood, a mood that doesn’t really interest me. An emotion is elicited by an image, a harmony or a chord change, some “that” you can point to. Of course that “that” is just a part of a whole and must work well within it but I find at least for me, if I listen closely I can always find within the song some element that is making me feel something.

If an emotion is elicited by a specific working within a whole, mood is experienced as a whole made up of parts. There’s no one thing that I can point to to say that it sets the mood for a single piece. If I could, that would imply that that part stands out in some way, which upsets the balance and kills the mood. What that means is that there can be albums and songs that have a certain mood, but don’t make me feel anything, or at least very little.

And so we come to Amplified Heart. First, the good things: the lead singer, Tracey Thorn’s voice is exceptional. She can express depths of emotion without effort, as long as that emotion is sadness or some variation thereof. Second: the imagery is evocative, but not evocative enough to make it truly memorable. Some of the lyrics that aren’t particular images are pretty good as well, in a sort of “Oh that was clever” sort of way (“I wanna wake up after the night before”).

That might be the biggest reason I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of this album: it just isn’t enough. Yes it sets a melancholic mood, but that is not the sort of thing that will make me return to an album. I need something to latch on to, and this album just didn’t give me that.

3/5 As a fun experiment, see which version of “Missing” you like better, the original or the dance remix. The remix is what made them famous, but trying to figure out why is a fun exercise. I think it’s the cowbell.