Product reviewsAmplified Heart by Everything but the Girl (Cassette, Jul-1994, Atlantic (Label))

Soulful, Upbeat, New Territory for EBTG

You've listened to Eden, Idlewild and Love Not Money and written them off as being too folky. You've also heard Walking Wounded and Tempremental and discarded them being all beat and no soul. Now listen to Amplified Heart. Gotcha.

This is EBTG at their finest. One foot in their folk pop roots, the other creeping into the drum and bass genre they've recently lept into. At some points inherently acoustic, at others quite technical. It's a very distinctive sound which I've rarely heard anyone else pull with as much success. Sting and Gomez have come close but not close enough. Maybe it's because they lack the soft, delicacy of Tracy Thorn's voice. Her's is a voice perfectly suited to the melancholy love songs EBTG excel at and it's no surprise that this album is packed with them. Two Star is pain put to music, Disenchanted could drive you to suicide and as for Get Me and I Don't Understand Anything... Well they're not happy, but they are damn fine songs.

Thats not to say that EBTG aren't capable of joy. We Walk The Same Line is as upbeat as they've ever been and is quite jaunty in its own way. And then there's Missing. First off let me say that the acoustic version knocks Todd Terry's mix into a cocked hat but Terry's version acts as a nice counterpoint to the whole album. After so much acoustic work it's quite nice to hear them a little up tempo. It's also unfair to say that Terry pushed them into Walking Wounded as some claim. If you listen to tracks like Get Me and Troubled Mind you can hear a low key drum machine playing away, a sign of the way they were going even without Terry as a catalyst.

If they'd made another album like this instead of Wounded maybe EBTG would have conquered the world by now rather than having faded way like they did after Missing. I live in hope that one day they'll give Amp Heart a relisten and realise that this was their finest hour and return to the sound they made here. Until then I've got this to listen to instead. I can live with that.Read full review...