|
|
|
Saint Etienne - So Tough / Sound of Water
| Pitchfork |
|
Has there ever been a record more inviting than So Tough? Yeah, yeah: That's one of those classic contentious record review openers. Open to debate, easy enough to pick apart. I'm sure I could name 10 albums that rival So Tough on that front myself. But when So Tough is actually playing, I'm not sure I can think of anything record I so hope to wake up one day and actually find myself walking around inside of the world it conjures up. It's like a bright, hazy early morning captured on disc, those hours where the day is still all potential. In the two years between Saint Etienne's debut, 1991's Foxbase Alpha, and follow-up So Tough, Pete Wiggs, Bob Stanley, and Sarah Cracknell grew confident enough to chase that early morning vibe for a whole LP rather than craft Obvious Chart Hits to cement their status as burgeoning UK pop fixtures. Even the album's catchiest moments -- "Mario's Cafe", "You're in a Bad Way", "Avenue" -- are like sketches snatched from a personal demo reel compared to some of the glitzy indie-bubblegum and D.I.Y. disco on this reissue's second disc of extras and B-sides (cf. "Who Do You Think You Are?" and "Join Our Club")....full text |
|
|
| Inthenews |
|
What's it all about? Deluxe reissues of Saint Etienne’s second album, from 1993, and their fifth, from 2000. These reissues both feature an additional disc of B-sides, rare and previously unreleased tracks and are being released ahead of the band's upcoming gigs performing their debut album in its entirety in London and Manchester. Who's it by? Saint Etienne, named after the French football team (European Cup runners-up in 1970), were formed in Croydon in 1990. Formed by former music journalists and fronted by Sarah Cracknell they were early pioneers of indie dance music, fusing traditional English pop with sounds more common to the emerging house and rap scenes. As an example… "Squeezy bottles under Pepsi signs/Joe and Johnny chew the bacon rind/Jackie wants to meet the Glitter Band/Dilworth is a strange and lovely man/And Eubank wins the fight/And did you see the KLF last night?" – Mario's Cafe (from So Tough)...full text |
|
|
| Answers |
| Ten years on, Saint Etienne found themselves at a bit of a crossroads. They had long ago stopped having hits in the U.K., settling into a cult audience in both their homeland and the U.S. There isn't an inherent problem with having a cult audience, but cult bands often have the stigma of being on the cutting edge. At the start of their career, Saint Etienne was on the cutting edge. Their first two albums were at the foundation of many '90s pop trends, including the revival of swinging '60s London, the unabashedly melodic bent of Brit-pop, the fascination for forgotten easy listening artifacts from the '60s, the kaleidoscopic blend of '60s sound and '90s sensibility later heard on Beck records, plus the insurgent twee-pop of the late '90s. For their tenth anniversary, they decided to reclaim the cutting edge with Sound of Water. The album strove to keep the concise, song-oriented focus of Good Humor, while expanding the horizons of their music to focus on abstract, dreamy, electronic sounds. There are moments of pop pleasure here, surrounded by spare, languid electronica sections, vaguely reminiscent of the High Llamas. This is where maturity pays off. Saint Etienne never lingers too long in one area, letting the album flow gracefully between these two extremes and placing some very good pop melodies along the way. There are no knockout singles on par with those from So Tough or Tiger Bay, but Saint Etienne has pretty much given up on the pop charts, preferring to concentrate on cohesive, stronger albums. That may mean that Sound of Water simply isn't as exciting as their earlier work, and it also means that there isn't a good gateway song to the record. But that's OK, since with repeated plays, Sound of Water reveals itself as a first-rate effort. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide...full text |
|
|
Go to "Saint Etienne " lyrics