Saint Etienne
Finisterre

Distributed by
Mantra

• Year: 2002
• Rating: 10/10
• Cat. No: MNTCD 1033

Track listing:

1. Action
2. Amateur
3. Language Lab
4. Soft Like Me
5. Summerisle
6. Stop And Think It Over
7. Shower Scene
8. The Way We Live Now
9. New Thing
10. B92
11. The More You Know
12. Finisterre

The sixth album proper from perennial pop sophisticates Saint Etienne finds Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley in fine fettle.

Always at least one step ahead of their peers, and - luckily, as it turned out - overlooked during the brief mid-90s renaissance of British music (oh, hindsight is a wonderful thing), they continue to indulge in the most luxuriant and pleasurable aspects of intelligent electro-tinged pop. "Rock could be so great... but we make it sound so rubbishy", as the choice spoken intro to B92 would have it.

Indeed, most of Finisterre does make the hoarier trappings and blinkered, laboured thought processes of contemporary rock seem rather unappetising. They have a point.

Are Saint Etienne just a frothy treat, though, a minor divertion from REAL music, the important statements and social commentary, the music that changes lives and the world in general? Is there any actual substance to their knowingly retro outlook? These are the questions and perceptions which have dogged Saint Etienne for more than a decade now, questions and perceptions that have attempted to take the sun-kissed shine off one of the most incomparable catalogues in recent pop history.

Last year's Smash The System retrospective was a reminder of all they've achieved artistically, and also what they ought to have achieved commercially. It wasn't the complete story, as the band moved on from Heavenly for 2000's Sound Of Water and as such the likes of Heart Failed In The Back Of A Taxi and How We Used To Live were absent, but for any act with Avenue, People Get Real, He's On The Phone, Like A Motorway and, oooh, literally countless others, to never have graced the UK Top 10 at all in their career is not so much unfathomable as downright criminal. Yes, they reached #11 once, but that's not the point...

So, to Finisterre... a 12-pronged delight to bring cheer into the most despondent fan of proper pop music; a world away in spirit to the joyless humping of current chart fodder, yet borne from the classic 4-minute format that has survived for generations now. It's what you do with it that counts, you see.

And what Saint Etienne do with it is fashion a sublime cocktail of summery grooves, bleeps, ooohs, aaahs, and overall loveliness - a kind only they seem to be capable of. Sometimes they are cheeky (B92), sometimes they are still surprisingly chart-friendly (Soft Like Me), sometimes they sound like The Human League (Amateur's buzzing synths and terse lyrical couplets) but mostly they are just the recognisable Saint Etienne that anyone familiar with them will know and love to bits. The snatches of dialogue reappear for the first time since So Tough, linking each song here seamlessly without becoming too much of an annoyance, while the instrumentals (Language Lab and The Way We Live Now) which also make a return are quintessential Etienne.

In the grand scheme of things, Finisterre surely ranks alongside 1994's Tiger Bay as their most succinct encapsulation of the various ingredients used in creating the immaculate yet freewheeling Saint Etienne sound.

Review copyright © Liam Carey, 2002.