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$19.99 CD
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SAINT ETIENNE
Words and Music by Saint Etienne
(Heavenly)
 "Tonight"
"Twenty-Five Years"
UK pop stalwarts Saint Etienne return with their first album in seven years, following a break which saw the band members remaster and reissue their back catalogue in excellent deluxe editions, make more than one film, curate a few compilations for the Ace label, and write a book. That book, by St Et's Bob Stanley (who has been a journalist/music critic for as much time as he's been a producer and musician), is an ambitious history of pop music due to be released in the fall, and it was during the research and writing of that book that Stanley and the group came to the idea of making a record about records -- while Sarah Cracknell and Pete Wiggs relocated and began families, Stanley recognized that he was still firmly entrenched in the waters of pop, far from the quiet reclusion of suburban life his band mates were living, and which they'd brilliantly begun to explore on their last album, the criminally underrated Tales from Turnpike House. They decided they'd stick to what they knew, and the group crafted the stellar new record, Words and Music by Saint Etienne, a tribute not only to music's important role in even the most mundane aspects of a fanatic's life, but also to the idea of learning how to grow older and wiser while never letting go of the youthful exuberance and euphoric rush that pop and its door-opening epiphanies can provide.
Lyrically, the album's songs focus on different day-in-the-life aspects of the pop fan: the excitement of getting ready to see your favorite act live, the private universe provided by the safety blanket of headphones playing your favorite song, the friend who always knows the perfect song to play for you when you're having a bad day, and also the community of bitching, moaning, and hyperbolic praising about musicians on internet message boards -- it's all here, set to music that balances the more mature, nuanced arrangements of albums like Turnpike House and Good Humor with some of the band's shiniest, most curvaceous pop/club textures they've ever put to disc, provided by collaborators Ian Catt, Xenomania and Richard X. I'll be honest, Saint Etienne have been and still remain one of my all-time favorite groups, and I can say as a hardcore fanboy that this is one of their best, most mature albums yet, filled with their referential trademarks and sharp eyes on both pop's past and its contemporary trends. This is not only one of the best records of their career, it's also one of my favorite albums of 2012 thus far. Pop music seldom gets as sharp, witty, and euphoric as this, and its easy to hear how they've become the forefathers of a new generation of pop collusionists like the Avalanches, Air France, and Grimes, amongst many others. This album readily answers the questions posed in the songs' lyrics about whether or not an adult can age gracefully with pop, and that answer is a joyous, resounding yes. In other words, there's still hope, and this album provides yet another key piece of the puzzle that is Saint Etienne's impressive, iconic canon. In short, it's absolutely stunning. Give it a listen and learn its lessons. [IQ]
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