Send "Saint Etienne " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Many great pop songs can be said to have their own personality. Saint Etienne's have their own sense of place. Last June, Swedish dance-pop duo Air France released "GBG Belongs to Us", a three-part multimedia tribute to their hometown of Gothenburg. The Swedes explained their intentions in words lovingly similar to the ones they'd used to describe Saint Etienne in a Pitchfork interview a few months earlier: "There's a sense of geography and architecture in what they do, and that's very important for my relation to pop music."That goes for Pete Wiggs, Bob Stanley, and Sarah Cracknell. As anybody who recognized the above reference to early Saint Etienne album cut "London Belongs to Me" already knows-- and many more people are just in time to discover. The UK trio's first two albums, 1991's Foxbase Alpha and 1993's So Tough, were metropolitan through and through, building 1990s ambient-house modernism onto a foundation of 1960s Swinging London mod. Add the slightly twee romanticism of record-collecting indie kids, and the results transported listeners someplace new and fantastical. (Full disclosure: Stanley, a music journalist, has contributed to Pitchfork.) Faster than you could say "Live Forever", though, there went the neighborhood. As if those first two albums weren't far enough out of step with the prevailing trend toward grunge, then along came Britpop, which picked up Saint Etienne's Anglophilia only to mire it, with a few happy exceptions, in retro guitars and lad culture. The group kept on moving-- and just as well, too. Tiger Bay was where they successfully confronted that Difficult Third Album by taking the M4 through the British countryside. Finisterre was where, after a record or two in the (relative) wilderness, they revisited their old London and once again made it new. Both, as the latest in an ongoing series of 2xCD reissues from this influential but still underappreciated band, have plenty to offer, to longtime followers and curious newcomers alike....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Saint Etienne have always been a strange proposition. A blazing pop band, committed in widescreen and with no bones about it, their best songs still sound classically of their time. The band managed to straddle the magic three lanes of critical acclaim, a cult fan base and unashamed pop. It’s something they did really rather well as their back catalogue testifies. The latest two albums to be reissued have a ten-year age difference and see the band in two different states – at their critical best on 1994’s Tiger Bay and then at the tail end of their career on 2002’s Finisterre. Tiger Bay takes you right back and hauls you into its speed on opener ‘Urban Clearway’ with its almost pumping four-to-the-floor Europop beat and synth bass. There’s something quite lush about the not-quite-there organ and blissful exterior – it ramps up the drama just the right amount. The highs on Tiger Bay are innumerable but ‘Hug My Soul’ remains one of the group’s very best moments, the deliciously Nineties bass and flute should sound dated, but it still fits just as it should – and Sarah Cracknell’s sultry verses drape seductively in the doorway of that chorus. It’s still huge, the sleight-of-hand set up of "I’ll be there" pushes towards the cliff edge before the freewheeling, arms-in-the-air chorus drops. Things get ramped up even further later in the song with a lilting key-change in the final chorus, it’s purified bliss; you might as well be carried along the air by a flock of birds for all the light-headed dizziness. Elsewhere on Tiger Bay the band provide a blueprint for groups like Air France and jj on tracks like ‘On The Shore’, with its after-hours puff where the vocals sound lackadaisically exhaled on a smoke cloud. Further highlight ‘Like a Motorway’ finds the group in metronomic pound with synth arpeggios and 909s pushing things forward. It’s tough to understate the influence of Saint Etienne on so much music from the past ten years – for every wounded electronic group along the lines of Junior Boys., you can sure as hell assume there is a battered copy of Tiger Bay on the shelf. The reissue does a fine job serving a reminder of its brilliance, and rewarding fans with a second disc of demos and rarities that find the band sounding rougher around the edges and almost better for it at points – especially the minimal embryonic take of ‘Hug My Soul’ for interests-sake. (8)...full text |
| Virgin |
| With album re-releases, it’s always interesting how their received. The most common comment any artist will receive will be the money grabbing/exploitation of the fans. To an extent that, argument can be agreed upon. Why should people have to fork out money for an album they’ve already purchased? If it’s just for a master in sound and a digital spray up of the artwork, the majority won’t be won over, just the hardcore elite. Only when some care and consideration goes in to an old release, should attention be paid. Saint Etienne’s 'Tiger Bay' album was their third studio release and originally released in 1994. Now extinct in record shops and only traceable via the world’s biggest online car boot sale known as eBay, copies are hard to come by. Now sixteen years old, the most important question that has to be asked of it is, “does it still have a fresh edge, or has it gone staler then a bakers loaf?” Thankfully, you could still easily release this today as a modern piece of material that a new audience would lap up. This almost stands as a time capsule for electronic music. In 1994, the scene had escaped the initial ecstasy scaremongering hype and settled in to more than just the Friday night illegal rave. Multiple bands and producers were forming and Saint Etienne had already released two prior albums before 'Tiger Bay'. At its time, modern techno music and folk were fused together to form a sound that was revolutionary given the two genres having nothing to do with each other before hand. Orchestral backings can also be found etched around in the background showcasing the bands determination to offer something completely different....full text |
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