angels twenty - return home

Saint Etienne
The Way I Fell For You
The Misadventures Of Saint Etienne (1999)

The number of releases your standard Saint Etienne fan is likely to know nothing about is staggering. Between the British pop band’s fan club releases, a bevy of remix and b-side albums, and the mitigating effects of the Atlantic ocean on trade, there’s an entire world of Saint Etienne songs you probably haven’t heard even if you’ve plastered the walls with pictures of Sarah Cracknell and have named your first-born after Pete Wiggs (”Bob” just seemed too blah of a name).

Between the bright 60s lounge-pop of Good Humor and the vastly more teutonic electronica of Sound Of Water lies the soundtrack to The Misadventures Of Margaret. Around the same time Sub Pop released the Places To Visit EP in the States, Saint Etienne served up an album of instrumentals and complete songs to the European and Japanese markets. Arguably they got the better end of the deal.

It means that those of us in North America missed out on gems like “The Way I Fell For You,” which represents late-era Saint Etienne at its finest. The band returns to the sequencers for the album, partially eschewing the live instruments of Good Humor. This track in particular is the danciest of the bunch, a prime example of just how irresistable Saint Etienne can be.

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