Marine Girls

All Music Guide:

Before Tracey Thorn established herself with Everything but the Girl, she produced mellow, spare indie pop with the all-female act the Marine Girls. Inspired by the Raincoats and the Young Marble Giants, Thorn formed the Marine Girls with her schoolmate Gina and Jane Fox in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England, in 1980. At first, Thorn played guitar with Gina on vocals and Fox on bass. Since they knew no drummers, the group decided to focus on a minimalist approach to music. After Gina kept missing rehearsals, she was replaced by Jane Fox's younger sister, Alice Fox, on vocals; Thorn would eventually sing as well. The trio recorded a tape called A Day by the Sea and sold it to their acquaintances. The Marine Girls eventually released two albums in the U.K., 1982's Beach Party and 1983's Lazy Ways. Lazy Ways was produced by one of the band's influences, Stuart Moxham of the Young Marble Giants. While attending Hull University, Thorn began writing songs for herself; she was only able to gig with the Marine Girls during holidays. The Marine Girls broke up after Thorn and Alice Fox had an argument following a concert in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1983. Thorn then recorded her solo album A Distant Shore before joining Ben Watt in Everything but the Girl. In 1997, Cherry Red Records combined both of the Marine Girls' albums onto one CD; spinART reissued the albums in the US four years later.

Wikipedia:

Marine Girls were a post-punk group from Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The group was formed in 1980, by two sixth form school friends: Tracey Thorn and Gina Hartman. Originally, Thorn just played guitar and Hartman was the lead vocalist and percussionist. Thorn overcame her shyness and started singing too by the time they started making records. They were later joined by Jane Fox on bass and her younger sister, Alice, on joint vocals and percussion.

History

Contemporaries of acts such as Young Marble Giants and The Raincoats, the group applied the DIY ethic of the time to record a self-produced and self-released cassette called A Day By The Sea. They went on to record an album Beach Party which was recorded in a garden shed and released on In-Phaze then re-released by Dan Treacy of Television Personalities for his label Whaam! Records. In October 1981, Thorn moved to Hull to attend university, and Hartman left the band in 1981 to pursue other musical projects whilst the Fox sisters both went on to art school in Brighton. The group still performed together and released a second album, Lazy Ways, in April 1983.

From 1982, Thorn concentrated on her studies and her growing personal and professional relationship with fellow Hull student Ben Watt (who had contributed a photograph for the cover of the Lazy Ways album according to the album credits). As Everything But The Girl, their first single included a re-recording of the Marine Girls song, "On My Mind".

Marine Girls formally disbanded in 1983. Thorn achieved success with Everything But The Girl, while the Fox sisters recorded as Grab Grab the Haddock.

Beach Party was named as one of Kurt Cobain's 50 favourite albums in his diaries. The two albums were reissued as a "two-fer" on CD by Cooking Vinyl in 1997.

Marine Girls recorded two Peel Sessions. Their first one contains five songs; "Don't Come Back", "Love To Know", "He Got The Girl", "Fever" and "A Place in the Sun".

Their second Peel Session contains four songs; "Lazy Ways", "That Day" (otherwise unavailable by Marine Girls although reworked by Grab Grab the Haddock), "Seascape" (otherwise unavailable by Marine Girls although reworked by Tracey Thorn for her debut solo album A Distant Shore) and a cover version of "Love You More" by Buzzcocks. Thorn doesn't sing on this Peel Session.