I first heard Saint Etienne during Love Parade, the massive techno festival
that stops Berlin in its tracks every summer. The long-running Surrey,
England combo wasn't playing there - the thousands (seriously, fucking
*thousands*) of pink-haired ravers who had flocked to the city were there to
celebrate dance-music a bit ballsier than Saint Etienne's touchy-feely
acid-house -but they managed to provide the musical impression from that
weekend that stayed with me the longest.
I was crashing on the couch of a lovely German girl, someone with whom I had
sufficient history to make crashing on the couch an extremely disappointing
accomodation. As I was packing my bags on the morning of my last day in
town, delicate clouds of dance-pop began wafting in from the bathroom.
Having nearly exhausted my German in three days of groping for topics not
related to Sandra's refusal to have sex with me, I marshaled my reserves
and inquired, "Was hren wir zu?"
"Saint Etienne," came the reply.
The association was immediate and long-lasting, and for years just hearing
those two words brought the whole morning back in a rush, the way the smell
of Jagermeister causes your gut to clench years after a bender. I've
attributed to this harmless band all of the frustrating characteristics I
perceived in the girl who first exposed me to them: aloofness, arch
sophistication, ambiguity, and above all a European haughtiness that left me
mute with self-consciousness and mired in my cultural swamp.
Pretty dramatic, I know, and that's partly why it's so refreshing, upon
finally listening to Saint Etienne at length, to realize that they possess
none of those traits. On the contrary, they're an imminently accessible
little pop band whose retrospective CD "Travel Edition 1990-2005," while it
occasionally shows Saint Etienne's roots in a dance idiom that hasn't
exactly aged well, is almost always pleasant to listen to and sometimes
thumps its way into the pantheon of classic dance music.
The core of Saint Etienne is formed by Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete
Wiggs, and though innumerable guests have swirled in and out over the years,
Cracknell's voice over Wiggs’ and Stanley's shimmering arrangements has
defined the group's sound group's sound since George Bush I. And if you're
the right age, some of the older songs will send you right back to those
days.
The early dance tunes, while interestingly anachronistic, are too creaky to
inspire more than polite head-bobbing these days. These guys came up
alongside P.M. Dawn and Bomb the Bass, and the goofy syncopations that were
en vogue at the time just don't pack the floor like they did in the
early 90's. Of the older tunes, it's the ballads that have held up the
best. "Mario's Cafe," from 1993, is a great little slice-of-life song with
a killer arrangement (violins *and* flutes) and an airy vocal by Cracknell.
The song isn't really about anything more than getting together for
breakfast with friends and talking about music, but the blah lyrics are all
forgiven when Cracknell name-drops the KLF. No shit, she actually sings,
"Did you see the KLF last night?" The KLF! As in, “KLF! Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh!”
The lovely "Hobart Paving" wraps around Cracknell's
featherweight vocal, strings swelling and guitars trembling behind her as
she sings "Baby, don't forget to catch me." Points also for the
oh-so-slightly Neil Young-y melody and very Neil Young-y French horn. (If
you think I'm imagining things, check out Saint Etienne's cover of "Only
Love Can Break Your Heart," which is included on "Travel Edition" and whose
original form appears on the same Neil Young album as "After the Gold Rush,"
the song that "Hobart Paving" reminds me of. So who's your daddy?)
Rinky-dink rhythms aside, the early dance-tracks are strengthened by Saint
Etienne's penchant for interesting instrumentation. There's the
aforementioned flute solo on "Mario's Café," and 1994's "Hug My Soul" so
sparkles with vibraphone flourishes that it sounds like the Modern Jazz
Quartet dropping in on "Like A Prayer"-era Madonna. It may not totally
redeem the dated drumming, but it does make the Casio-sounding shuffle
easier to ignore.
And the beats soon catch up with the textures. Aside from two "previously
unreleased" bookends, "Travel Edition" is sequenced chronologically, and
it's fun to watch the band firm up their attack as the years go by.
The propulsive twofer of "He's On the Phone" and "Burnt Out Car," both from
1997's "Continental" LP, finally serve up the window-rattling whump and
driving synths we all knew were coming. The muscular beats are a
quantum-leap beyond the clunky rat-tat-tat of early songs like "Nothing Can
Stop Us," and not just because dance music itself upped the ante. Saint
Etienne shine in the context of clubland, and Sarah Cracknell, floating
like ether over the pounding bass, is a true diva.
The record loses steam in the late 90's as Saint Etienne wind their way
through straight-up rock ("Lose That Girl"), conga-tinged techno ("Sylvie,"
which also has some killer piano work), and lame ballads ("How We Used to
Live"). Things get interesting again when we hit 2000's rumbling "Heart
Failed (In the Back of a Taxi),” but other than that there's not much reason
to stick around till the end. Saint Etienne's work of recent years has
neither the clumsy charm of their early stuff nor the confident heft of
their mid-90's dance material.
And while I'm hating, what's with the title? It's still 2004, you silly
Brits! You can't just add an extra year onto the life of your band to make
it add up pretty!
Anyway, Saint Etienne at their best could still get a club jumping, at their
worst they're ignorable, and in between they provide a nifty nostalgia trip.
And what more could a nice German girl ask for? |