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Album Review
by SashaS
9-10-2002
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| St Etienne and magic of 'Finisterre' |
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Saint Etienne: 'Finisterre'
(Mantra)
St Etienne are alone on a panache highway
Saint Etienne have always toyed with genres but never played the game. They’ve had chart success but it was more like a fluke rather than by design. Because there is something so human about them, so fragile, so precious, these urbane groovers. After prolonged break for the singer to have a baby, ‘Finisterre’ is another slice of sonic delicacy.
The disc is named after a discontinued place of reference on BBC Shipping Forecasts, Cape Finisterre is the westernmost point of Spain, it actually sounds like an imaginary, or magical place. It can be translated either as ‘Land’s End’ or ‘The End Of The World’ and both apply because music sounds really otherworldly, airy, like walking through a dream… It is close and yet remains so out of reach…
The main reason for it is the vocals of Sarah Cracknell who delivers them breathlessly, enticingly, sexily, drawing males to speakers like magnet and making women envious by lacking ability to reproduce such aura of aural elegance. The delight of it is that is not contrived, an act; having met her I know she’s neither an extrovert nor a vamp, Cracknell simply has ‘it’, the natural eroticism to drive you to a confession in spite of agnosticism or atheism.
Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley have used actor Michael Jayston to voiceover one-liners between songs that are delivered in utter seriousness although proclaiming “Have you ever been to a Harvester before?’, at the beginning of the album (making you instantly question own wisdom of such an experience), and ‘The world began in Eden and ended in Los Angeles’ (before track 8, ‘The Way We Live Now’). The only other notable guest is Doves’ guitarist Jez Williams.
It gives the disc an appearance of an audio-play, a sonic-drama with songs and yet not a musical. It is a strange fish and thus more appealing as you can’t hook it up with one bait. There is electro-poppiness, disco, rock, ambient, rapping (‘Soft Like Me’, featuring Wildflower), noises, a funfair of uncommon sounds. Songs such as ‘Amateur’, ‘Language Lab’, ‘Stop And Think It Over’, all the way to the concluding title track, lend themselves to repeated plays while providing food rather than the contemporary pop’s ‘foot for thought’.
‘Finisterre’ is an eclectic offering that doesn’t work at all times but that’s the beauty of it. Even the weaker moments – ‘Shower Scene’ for instance (and if it is the Hitchcock’s one, the inspiration has failed them) – sound deliciously endearing and utterly luscious.
Saint Etienne have always done things their own way and it is the reason they’ll be around far longer than many others who have, and incoming army will increasingly, toe the line.
8/10
SashaS
9-10-2002
Saint Etienne’s ‘Finisterre’ is released 07 October 2002 on Mantra
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