Music review: Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn. Record. Unmade Road.

★★★★

Grown women could sorely use a riot grrrl movement of their own. Because later life still throws out what a disgusted Tracey Thorn, on Sister, recognises as the "same old s***".

Thorn is no stroppy three-chord bellower, though, having lungs of velvet and actual 1980s pop stardom in her backstory (Everything But the Girl).

This third solo album - "nine feminist bangers", Thorn has quipped - finds the singer up against electronic backings, drilling down into complex emotions.

And some simpler ones: Dancefloor is a vocoder-embellished '80s squelch-fest mostly dedicated to the joy of cutting loose while half-cut. Go is a farewell to a departing offspring; Babies is an ode to birth control, then reproduction. It's grown up but rooted in the '80s and '90s.

 - Kitty Empire/ Guadian News & Media

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