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3 weeks ago | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
As I sit down to write this I note that it’s the five-year anniversary of the start of lockdown, and I’m reminded of the miserable day when Ben had to cancel all his touring, and how it marked such an abrupt end to that period of his work. In the interim, a couple of years ago, he and I made a return to recording as Everything But the Girl, and I’ve written here about the experience of reuniting after a long period to make an album together.
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1 month ago | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
The other night Ben and I watched the new Sly Stone documentary, Sly Lives! (AKA The Burden of Black Genius). Directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, it’s an exploration and celebration of Stone’s prodigious talent, but also an attempt to understand his downfall, and to place it in the wider context of being a black artist in America, with all the obstacles and traps that are placed in the way.
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1 month ago | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
Sometimes you choose a book, and sometimes it chooses you. This happened to me the other day in the bookshop when my eye was caught by a title – The Odd Woman and the City.
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2 months ago | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
I was never a Led Zeppelin fan. As a child, I grew up with their sound spilling out from my older brother’s bedroom, but they didn’t appeal to me as much as his other records by people like Bowie and The Faces. They seemed somehow more difficult. Perhaps I had a sense that they weren’t meant for me. When Ben and I went the other day to see the new documentary film, Becoming Led Zeppelin, directed by Bernard MacMahon, it was in a spirit of curiosity rather than avid fandom.
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2 months ago | 
internazionale.it | Tracey Thorn
È una piovosa domenica pomeriggio, vado in un cinema per vedere The brutalist. So che è un film lungo, quindi ho scelto un luogo confortevole, mangiato il mio spuntino durante le pubblicità prima dell’inizio, ed eccomi sistemata in tutta comodità per le ore successive. Le luci si abbassano e comincia il film. Sullo schermo Adrien Brody – diventato famoso con Il pianista, mentre qui interpreta un tormentato architetto – appare nell’oscurità.
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2 months ago | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
It’s a wet Sunday afternoon and I’ve come to a luxury cinema to see The Brutalist. I know it’s a long film, so I’ve chosen this comfortable location, and I’ve eaten my snacks while the adverts played, and I’m cosy and settled in for the hours ahead. The lights dim and the film begins. Up on the screen Adrien Brody – of The Pianist fame, here playing a tormented architect – appears in the darkness.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
The sign just inside the entrance is quite simple – it points left and says: “The 80s”. It’s as though I’m about to enter a time machine and step back into a decade which, to me, feels like yesterday and also a lifetime ago. I’m at Tate Britain to see an exhibition called “The 80s: Photographing Britain” which sets out to explore “the work of a diverse community of photographers, collectives and publications – creating radical responses to the turbulent Thatcher years”.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
Am I too old to like Charli XCX? It’s a bit naff isn’t it, people my age going on about a “brat summer”, thinking it makes them down with the kids. “God, shut up,” you want to say, “can’t you just carry on listening to your old vinyl and leave SOMETHING for the young people to call their own?”A male journalist I know posted about going to Mitski’s London show recently, and noted that the audience was made up of cool 20-something women, with a smattering of 6 Music dads.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
The morning of the US election result I sat down at the piano and tried to play some Beethoven. Bearing in mind that I haven’t played the piano in about 15 years, and haven’t properly practised since I was a teenager, the results were mixed. At first I was tentative and nervous but before too long my mood overtook me, all the shock and anger and frustration and disappointment flooding out in a torrent of hammering and excessive use of the pedal.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Tracey Thorn
Laura Marling made me cry the other day. I was on my morning walk with her new album – mentioned in these pages last week – in my headphones. The track “Child of Mine” began with the sound of a baby gurgling. The guitar part started up and I idly wondered, “Is that baby on Laura’s lap, or in a Moses basket at her feet?” and then suddenly there were tears streaming down my face.
