Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
The String Quartet Tribute to the Velvet Underground + Nico
Music: Haben Yakir Li: The Malavsky Family Tribute
Velvet Hours-Stolen Moments [Import]
Album Description
Like most bands formed by former music journalists, Saint Etienne was a highly conceptual group, fusing the British pop sound of '60s London with the dance rhythms and productions that defined the post-acid house England of the early '90s. More than a decade into their career, Saint Etienne look to have mellowed into adulthood, mellowed into sophistication. This new album boils these impulses into one smooth, seamless thing. If any single word describes the results, it's "quaint"-- Tales... is a concept record verging on a musical score, offering a day-in-the-life cycle about the residents of an outer-London housing estate. This being Saint Etienne, those lives are drawn in the same shades of retro-modernity as the music: up-to-the-minute references sit side by side with a vibe that's all 1960s kitchen-sink English, brightly-colored and respectably working-class, Corn Flakes and teakettles. These songs create a space where nylon-stringed guitars and fluffy Free Design vocal harmonies mingle unawkwardly with well-styled house beats and synth swells. At times it sounds like the bucolic soundtrack from some sunny late-60s television documentary; at times it sounds like a dance club for the most well-adjusted people in the universe; and at its best it sounds like both at once. *There is no US release planned until January of 2006. Sanctuary. 2005.