Sound Of Water - Saint Etienne

If ever the whole of the music industry got together in one big, giant room and were to have an awards ceremony giving out awards to artists throughout the ages, one can imagine such luminaries as Placebo winning awards for 'Most Time Spent Ripping Off David Bowie & Marc Bolan', Maroon 5 winning the 'How On Earth Are This Lot In the Charts Award' and Shed Seven winning the 'Crikey, They're Not Very Good, Are They? Award'. But aside from that, I would ...
...Saint Etienne would walk away with 'Most Under-rated Band Of The 1990's'.

Saint Etienne were formed in the early 90's by music engineers Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs and became an underground sensation with their uncanny mix of classic 60's pop, northern soul and alternative dance. Their first album 'Foxbase Alpha', contained a brilliant cover of Neil Young's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart', which featured then-vocalist Moira Lambert. ... more

If ever the whole of the music industry got together in one big, giant room and were to have an awards ceremony giving out awards to artists throughout the ages, one can imagine such luminaries as Placebo winning awards for 'Most Time Spent Ripping Off David Bowie & Marc Bolan', Maroon 5 winning the 'How On Earth Are This Lot In the Charts Award' and Shed Seven winning the 'Crikey, They're Not Very Good, Are They? Award'. But aside from that, I would wager that it is a safe bet to say that Saint Etienne would walk away with 'Most Under-rated Band Of The 1990's'.

Saint Etienne were formed in the early 90's by music engineers Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs and became an underground sensation with their uncanny mix of classic 60's pop, northern soul and alternative dance. Their first album 'Foxbase Alpha', contained a brilliant cover of Neil Young's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart', which featured then-vocalist Moira Lambert. Since recruiting current vocalist Sarah Cracknell, they have become critical darlings, always on the verge of the mainstream but never quite breaking through. They've collaborated with the Doves, Tim Burgess of the Charlatans and David Holmes, and been supported on tour by Oasis, but while the Britpop boom saw several undeserving acts spring to prominence (that would be you, Shed Seven and Republica), Saint Etienne were perpetually ignored, surviving on a limited, but passionate fanbase. They occasionally broke through into the mainstream, with singles such as 'He's On The Phone' and 'You're In A Bad Way', but largely they remained an underground prospect, and have become more esoteric as time has passed.

'Sound of Water' was released in 2000 and is their strongest album to date. It mixes lush synths, some traditional arrangements and the usual mix of keyboard bleeps to make something quite gorgeous. The deliciously wry 'Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi)' is undoubtedly one of the albums stand-out tracks and was rightly released as a single (of course, it failed to get anywhere in the charts). Cracknell has always had a very dry, almost passionless voice but it is well suited to the material she sings, her blank vocal delivering lines like: "Sold the ground to a PLC/Moved the club out to Newbury/Sod the fans and their families/Heart failed in the back of a taxi" in complete monologue. The musical arrangement is brilliant and surrounds Cracknell's vocal with a dark beat and a mournful, yearning backdrop.

'Boy Is Crying' has a kind of rumba beat to it before becoming quite freeform with the electronic 'twiddly bits'. It carries on the theme of 'Heart Failed' and is something of a departure from Saint Etienne's previous material. The sun-soaked pop of earlier albums has been ditched in favour of a more downbeat approach, with small snapshots, vignettes of city life. 'Just A Little Overcome' is another example of this, a piano-led song that is almost a ballad, Cracknell almost sounding as though she is capable of emotion: "Space exploration is a noble thing/It's a noble thing if we'd only try/Arranging mountains is just mud and water/It's just mud and water and the passing of time".

The extremely bleepy and clicky 'Don't Back Down' is a sweeping, emphatic plea to somebody not to give up, the vocal split up by spoken word and bleepy electronic interludes. It is one of the more seemingly experimental tracks on the album. It is certainly a sonically adventurous track, representative of the adventure shown on the album as a whole. The band seemed to have captured the perfect synthesis between pop and avant-garde, simultaneously straddling both fields and excelling at both. Hence the record is both commercial and alternative. 'Sycamore' has a more traditional arrangement, reliant on acoustic guitars and backward cymbals, and emphasises the multi-layered effects that add to the pristine sheen on the album.

All in all, this is a fine album. It is certainly Saint Etienne's finest effort and is a near perfect synthesis of classic pop and avant-garde experimentalism, without sounding too off the wall that your average buyer would be turned off. Reccommended.

'Sound Of Water' is available from Amazon.co.uk for £6.97. 

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