Of course it's boutique music. You won't be able to dip niftily into Cole Haan for a pair of pumps without being brushed by Tracey Thorn's morose vocals or Ben Watt's primed-for-Lazy-Dog deep house setting. But why is it boutique music? What drives floor managers at Banana Republic to slide EBTG discs into the store system and expect the crepe de chine blouses to breeze out the store? Before hypothesizing on that one, I'd like to examine why "Lullaby of Clubland" and many other post-Missing EBTG songs are perfect disco.

Disco's initial power was its diversity. Before the term denoted a style, it marked out a feeling. What was the common thread between Michael Olatunji's "Drums of Passion" and the Temptation' "Cloud Nine?" Though they might arguably share the same low-budget production values, they both reflect an underground sensation.

After the 1969 Stonewall riots, when the love that still could not speak its name burst out onto the sidewalks and right in the public's dropped-jawed face, gay men found that they wanted to have tremendous fun together and be open about their lifestyle. The fact that, before then, any encounters had a distinctly clandestine buzz about them was admittedly mild arousing, but anyone so engaged could easily end up in a drunk tank or holding cell with some very unattractive bedmates. Juice bars and gay-owned establishments relished the newly grasped visibility and gave their clientele a place that wouldn't make them vulnerable to public scrutiny and loathing.

The music that blasted out of these places was R&B;, heavy rock, psychedelic soul-- anything that had either an outsider vibe or a message of liberation and hope. It's no surprise that the flag of the queer nation is the rainbow of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" promise.

But soon, the price of visibility and exposure had to be paid, and the retreat kicked in-- just as the so-called gay plague began to rob cities like New York and San Francisco of their sons. At this very time, disco had become the monster that forced Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones to fashion their own disco tunes just to appear au courant. Culture, like nature, obeys Newton's Third Law: for every action there's an equal an opposite reaction.

Underground dance tunes still expressed hope, but now as more and more clubbers got sick, a cruel and stalking dramatic irony leaked into the uplifting grooves. No record expresses this ambivalent reality than Machine's "There But for the Grace of God." Other tunes, such as DC La Rue's almost tribal anthem, "Cathedrals," express regret for past behaviors and a reticence to give those habits up entirely. This melancholy marks the second and more enduring wave of disco classics. Melancholy mixed into euphoric rump-shaking tunes is a potent force and one that speaks to our mortality.

Of course, an entire night of songs about how there's a Hell below and we're all going to die would bum out even Kant's philosophical brain. But you can find a fine thread of this introspection in the songs of Pet Shop Boys and the turbine house of Felix da Housekatt.

Everything But the Girl fit into this aesthetic perfectly. Before their conversion to club music, the duo's jazz-folk miserablism made them favorites for barflys who sank brews with Sade's Diamond Life in the background. The rest of us found their albums fussy, overly concerned with throwing jazz shapes, and way too art-schooly. But translate Thorn's lyrical preoccupations into a heavy house setting, and you're guaranteed to come up with club classic after club classic. It's all about the context, after all.

Because of the winning juxtaposition of Thorn's moaning on about being a mixed-up lonely kid who can't even get a shag off a soaked beardy-weirdy jazznik, and some stylin' deep house, Everything But the Girl have been surrounded by folks who wouldn't have even pissed on them previously. How must they be grateful to Todd Terry for opening their ears to house!

So why do you find yourself tearing up when shopping in Sephora? Is it because your arch-rival in eyeliner, Gabby Glickman, has sashayed off with the last bottle of "No, I'm not really a waitress" nail polish? Maybe. But more likely, the shrewd floor manager has put this disc on. You will part with money. You will have been targeted out for extreme credit card abuse. You will be sobbing not in spite of your appreciation of the inherent genius of EBTG's funky mopeyness, but directly because of it. Studies in fashion boutiques consistently prove that Tracey and Ben sell slingbacks. They also charm the pants off of me. But you wouldn't want to go near any of my fervidly discarded skootz, I assure you.

-Paul Cooper