Thanks to Saint Etienne’s recent fanclub-only limited edition boxset release, I now own almost eight solid hours of Saint Etienne music. Not a full day’s worth of pop pleasure, sure, but more music than any other artist in my collection—by quite a wide margin if you include all the stuff I don’t have on CD but have, erm, acquired by other means. (Hey, you try tracking down an inexpensive copy of The Misadventures of Saint Etienne. It took me a year to finally justify the purchase of the only Japanese album I own.) Boxette contributes a solid two and a half hours’ worth of material to my collection alone. Considering that it cost me about $55 CAD when all is said and done, that’s not too bad. But I almost didn’t pick it up.

Last year, Saint Etienne and I had a bit of a falling out. Still giddy off my new fanclub membership (which, granted, consisted of me signing up on a web form and receiving an e-mail, but hey), I proceeded to buy all the fanclub-only releases I could get my hands on. It had been a year and a half since Tales From Turnpike House and the desire for new material couldn’t be silenced. Generally speaking, the veteran British pop group have been quite good with b-sides; the Way Out West mix of “Angel,” “Stormtrooper in Drag” and Misadventures‘ “The Way I Fell For You” are some of the band’s best songs, and you won’t find any of them on any of their proper albums. But the 2007 crop of fanclub releases had me rethinking this stance. Nice Price was nice enough, but because it consisted entirely of outtakes and alternates of songs we’ve already heard, it wasn’t exactly new material. And as soundtrack albums go, What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? isn’t bad or anything, but it’s definitely no Misadventures and it’s almost completely bereft of Sarah Cracknell’s vocals. Plus the main theme of the movie is repeated three or four times in various guises. In the end, it’s less than essential listening for anyone but the most diehard Etienne fan or soundtrack aficionado.

So dropping $55 on a limited-edition boxset did not exactly seem like the best idea come Christmas time, especially after a bevy of large purchases that had critically wounded my savings account. But the band kept sending e-mails: “hey, um, sorry about the delays, we’re having troubles with the store because of the demand” and “ack, shipping delays, we’re really sorry, the early orders will go out soon,” and “another delay, really sorry but the packaging’s mucked things up, there’s only a few sets left so act quickly.” In the end, I caved, and a week and a half ago I received my shiny white Boxette: 2975/3000. Boy is that ever cutting it close.

And my goodness is it ever fantastic. Though three of the set’s four discs are remastered versions of old fanclub albums, I’d never heard any of them, so they all sounded new to me. And unlike the band’s studio albums, which all stand very well on their own as self-contained entities with purpose and progression, Boxette largely feels like the musical equivalent of one of my favourite lines from “Finisterre”: “I like the feeling of being slightly lost.” Built on Sand and I Love to Paint in particular are infused with a sense of pleasant aimlessness, like one long string of tangent after tangent. Asleep at the Wheels of Steel is a bit like the downbeat depressive of the group, but new disc Eric Random wraps things up nicely with a mix of unreleased material and fanclub EP tracks.

I’m pretty sure the first two discs are my favourite but haven’t quite decided which one. Early-era disc I Love to Paint splits its time between misfit dance-pop diamonds in the rough like “Everything I Touch Turns to Gold” and “Flight to Tashkent,” and breezy electronic instrumentals like “Fife Coast” and “Schroeder.” Built on Sand, compiled during the lead-up to 2000’s Sound of Water, leans more towards a mix of darker instrumentals from the band’s so-called “wilderness years” and more organic material that wouldn’t sound out of place on Good Humor, Fairfax High or Misadventures of Saint Etienne (and indeed, were recorded for and left off Misadventures). There are gems all over the set, though—even one or two on Asleep at the Wheels of Steel—and overall it’s hard to believe that I almost missed out.

Of course, if you’re reading this and you don’t already have a copy yourself, then you definitely have missed out; as you might’ve gathered from the number on my boxset, Boxette is sold out. But apparently Saint Etienne have plans to remaster and re-release all their old albums in expanded form, with extra b-sides and whatnot attached, plus another greatest hits with “This is Tomorrow” attached as a single. Oh, and there may or may not be a secret project in the works. Really, it all sounds like a smashing year—now, if only the band would get back in the studio and record an actual album…