Description
First released in 1996, Walking Wounded is the acclaimed million-selling album from Everything But The Girl - the best-selling UK duo formed in 1982 by singer-writer-musicians Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt - and arrives in a new 29-track deluxe CD reissue edition featuring additional remixes and extra tracks.
Walking Wounded peaked at #4 on the UK Album Chart in May 1996 and contains four UK Top 40 singles, including the Top 10 hits Walking Wounded and Wrong. In the process, it set new a benchmark for the intersection of contemporary electronic music and emotional pop songwriting.
If the album builds on the folktronica of the duo's previous million-seller, Amplified Heart, it also owes its sense of adventure to the subsequent success of Amplified Heart's breakout 1995 global hit, Missing (remixed by Todd Terry), and Thorn's 1994 collaboration with Bristol collective, Massive Attack, on their second album, Protection.
Inspired by London's burgeoning drum 'n' bass scene, and deep house imports from the US, Watt programmed and produced the bulk of the tracks in the basement of the duo's north London home demo studio using an Akai sampler, a synth and guitar, an inexpensive vocal mic, and an 8-track tape machine. Thorn's lone voice took centre stage, with the future-facing arrangements kept spare and stripped of background vocals. In addition, producer John Coxon (Spring Heel Jack), with whom the duo had worked on Amplified Heart, delivered the backing track for the album's title song, and beats specialist Howie B programmed the groove for Flipside. Everything was then transferred to 2" analogue tape and mixed at The Townhouse by Andy Bradfield.
Walking Wounded was acclaimed on its release on both sides of the Atlantic. 'The new incarnation of EBTG is the best yet. It's just going to take a while for people to catch up,' said NME. 'A career peak ... raw, pure and absolutely gorgeous,' said Rolling Stone. Twenty-three years later, in a 2019 retrospective review, Pitchfork awarded the album 9.0 and commented, 'Words don't do justice to the emotional multiplicity - hurt but warm, worn but rich - of Thorn's voice, and how seamlessly she made a home for herself amid Watt's stark sonic architecture.'
Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell, the running order follows the template of the now out-of-print 2015 deluxe edition with original artwork in a new layout by John Gilsenan at IWant Design, featuring full lyrics, credits and photos from the period.
