Everything But the Girl - Amplified Heart (25th Anniversary)

Everything But the Girl's Amplified Heart is the hushed, acoustic album that accidentally launched a global dance hit, revisited here in a 25th anniversary edition.

Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt made it in London over the winter of 1993 and 1994, producing it themselves with help from John Coxon and stripping their sound back to guitars, piano and upright bass. Folk royalty dropped in, with Danny Thompson on double bass, Dave Mattacks on drums and Richard Thompson adding lead guitar to "25th December".

"Missing" is the song everyone knows, though here it appears in its original, wistful form rather than the Todd Terry remix that later climbed to number two on the US Hot 100. "Rollercoaster" opens with gentle, rolling melancholy, and "Two Star" is lifted by Harry Robinson's string arrangement and a mournful cor anglais.

Thorn's voice is the quiet centre of it all, low and close and devastatingly calm, singing about distance, longing and the small rooms where relationships are won and lost. The arrangements leave plenty of air around her, so every guitar figure and bass note counts.

Playing the original ten songs as they were first heard, this vinyl edition makes a strong case for Amplified Heart as the duo's quiet masterpiece.