Everything But The Girl are cool with the kids as they re-ignite with Fuse

The married couple's three children were infants when the acclaimed UK electronic-soul duo went on "hiatus" in 2000.

In the ensuing 23 years both have continued making music in solo projects, or in Thorn's case, published books. Her work includes the top-10 bestseller Bedsit Disco Queen (2013) about her early life in music and the 2021 memoir My Rock 'n' Roll Friend about her friendship with Lindy Morrison, the drummer of '80s Australian indie band The Go-Betweens.

However, seeing their parents work on music together did "shock" their offspring.

"They said, 'I thought you'd retired'," Thorn smiles. "They have no experience of us being Everything But The Girl.

"Once they got over the shock, it's been good because they like the record. They were very relieved when they heard the record and thought, 'They haven't embarrassed us'."

Watt says having US rapper Tyler, The Creator - who boasts 24.5 million monthly Spotify listeners - use one of their songs in an Instagram post also helped their street cred.

"Our music has started to appear in their lives organically," he says. "There's been this '90s revival and our kids were starting to come home from parties or university and say, 'We just heard a track from Walking Wounded played alongside something modern'.

"They started to realise there was this revival of a sound we made in the '90s which impressed them."

Almost two decades before their children were born EBTG emerged out of Hull.

Throughout the '80s and early '90s they released eight albums, constantly shape-shifting and blending elements of jazz, folk, pop, house and trip-hop to create an minimalist and romantic sound of their own.

They'd enjoyed critical acclaim - particularly for their 1988 album Idlewild - but commercial success had been measured.

That all changed in 1995 when DJ-producer Todd Terry remixed the acoustic-driven Missing with hypnotic house beats. Missing and its classic hook of, "And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain," reached No.2 in Australia and the US and No.3 in the UK.

Then in 1996 EBTG released the trip-hop flavoured Walking Wounded album, which was a worldwide commercial and critical smash. A 10^th album, Temperamental, followed in 1999 but within a year EBTG called it quits at the height of their popularity.

The couple wanted to focus on their young family, but Watt says EBTG had also outgrown their intentions.

"I realised I wasn't enjoying it that much," he says. "The venues were getting bigger, the crowds were getting substantially bigger and I started to realise while I was on stage that our music was starting to lose its meaning."

With Fuse there's no desire to perform live or relaunch EBTG. The album purely arose out of a desire to work together again. COVID was the impetus.

During the recording process the project was kept secret from almost everyone, barring their children.

"I had a sense of time passing," Thorn says. "It was bit of a wake-up call the pandemic, and as for everyone, it made you aware of your vulnerabilities and the fact that you can't always control life and make plans necessarily.

"I had this sudden thought, 'one day we'll work together again,' but when is that one time?"

Fuse is very much a modern electronic-soul record - stitched together by Watt's hypnotic beats and synths and Thorn's ever-emotive vocal.

The advances in music technology in the 24 years since Temperamental were an attractive proposition for a duo who were always focused on creating fresh sounds.

"We realised there were so many new treatments we could use on the vocals, particularly, that have come in since we stopped," Watt says.

"Like the pitch-changing, altering the tonality of the voice, stuff you hear all the time on records by Kendrick Lamar or Frank Ocean, but for us it was technology that only came out in recent years.

"We thought why treat Tracey's voice like this sacred instrument, the way we always have done? Let's see on a few occasions if we can change it and warp it to change the texture for the record."

Everything But The Girl's new album Fuse is out on April 21.