In February of 1988 Everything but the Girl released their 4th studio album.

Tracey Thorn:
“I am writing songs, though; lyrics that are more like short stories than pop lyrics. Perhaps they ought to be short stories. They don’t really have choruses. Maybe I’m just not very good at choruses. Ben is experimenting with synths and keyboards. He buys a drum machine and starts getting into the finer details of how to programme it. I don’t know how to operate the drum machine, or how to turn the synths on, and I’m not bothered enough to learn. There is some disagreement about what our next record should sound like. We keep changing our minds. I still write all my songs on a guitar or at the piano, and so when I play them they sound a bit like my songs have always sounded. But Ben is writing songs with a more modern sound, using his new synths and the drum machine, and I like these too. We veer between these two possible extremes before making a record, Idlewild, which incorporates a bit of both. Maybe it’s another ‘bizarre hybrid’”

Lets talk Everything but the Girl, Idlewild!