Over the past 24 years, Tracey Thorn has released four solo albums and published four books. Ben Watt founded a label, Buzzin' Fly, and made his own solo records. But it's been nearly a quarter century since the married duo produced a record together as Everything but the Girl. Fuse is worth the wait. During that time, and before, the band's influence has remained strong—there's no shortage of singers cooing beautiful misery over drum-and-bass beats. But, as Romy Madley Croft of The xx has said of Thorn: "One of my goals always is to say a lot while saying very little … and I definitely think that Tracey does that." On lush "Nothing Left To Lose," Thorn sounds as smoky and soulful as ever against Watt's sonic reverberations, even as she gives in to submissive desperation. "I'm here at your door/ And I've been here before/ Tell me what to do/ Cause nothing works without you/ I know the hour is late/ And I know you'll make me wait." At one point, the glitch beat drops down, then out, and you hear Thorn take a breath in—and it's as intimately meaningful as any words. She sounds comfortable wearing Dusty Springfield's mantle on stark and spare, deep and dark "Run A Red Light" and "When You Mess Up." The latter doesn't have a traditional ending; instead, it's just Thorn singing "Christ, we all mess up" as the music lingers, unsure if she'll return, then fades—content not to put a bow on it. Watt puts a sort-of AI effect on Thorn's voice for that song and adds an electronic tremor to it for "Caution To The Wind." "We have to fuck up my voice," Thorn has said of the record. "We were desperate to fuck up my voice. It's one of the key signatures of the band, so it was the most fun thing," Thorn has said of the experiment. The duo said they wrote the lyrics for shimmering "Lost" by typing "I lost..." into Google for auto-fill results. "I lost my place/ I lost my bags … I lost my perfect job/ I lost the plot," Thorn sings, before delivering the gut punch: "I lost my faith and my best friend/ I lost my mother." She gets lyrically playful on dreamy "No One Knows We're Dancing" ("First up, this is Fabio/ He drives here from Torino/ Parking tickets litter/ His Fiat Cinquecento") and sunny "Karaoke" (A guy then goofed through Elvis/ Why not, I thought, why not?/ If you want it you can own it/ Just aim, then take a shot"), one setting the scene at a dance club and the other at a karaoke bar. "After so much time apart professionally, there was both a friction and a natural spark in the studio when we began," Thorn has said of musically reuniting with her husband. "And it ended in a kind of coalescence, an emotional fusion. It felt very real and alive."
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