Everything But the Girl: Like The Deserts Miss The Rain : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Top moments from one of the great sad voices of the last couple of decades during the twenty-year history of Everything But the Girl, producer Ben Watt has laid down Spartan arrangements for the supple, mournful voice of Tracy Thorn and then stepped out of the way. Given room -- over the stately folk of "My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains" or the atmospheric lounge-core of "Mirrorball" -- Thorn mulls, mopes and spins melancholy yarns with just a choice few words, her smoky voice better at hinting than at outright declaration (see Massive Attack's "Protection," included here, for her at her most luminescent). Thorn and Watt's natural chemistry notwithstanding, EBTG's most transcendent moments have come on dance remixes, on which Thorn's vocals nestle neatly into the pocket of propulsive tracks, as on Photek's crisp version of "Single" and Todd Terry's essential dub-house take on "Missing." Crying on the dance floor never sounded so good.

JON CARAMANICA
(From RS 920, April 17, 2003)