[review 2005: the best of the year]

A lot of Saint Etienne’s albums sound like they were conceived as snapshots of life in London, but I think this is the first album where that goal was made explicit. Turnpike House, a tower block of apartments in London, is the setting for Saint Etienne’s most interesting portrait of London to date.

Tales From Turnpike House is the sound of a band apparently at a crossroads, though in reality Saint Etienne have been figuring out a new direction for a long while now. There are a couple of factions: the Good Humor camp seems to have conceived the more organic-sounding, light pop fare of “Sun In My Morning” and “Side Streets.” Then there’s the old school camp, from whence the Eurodisco pop tracks like “A Good Thing” and “Stars Above Us” hail. Finally, there’s a third group that doesn’t sound much like anything the band have done before; file “Slow Down At The Castle,” “Last Order For Gary Stead” and “Teenage Winter” in that category. It all sounds like Saint Etienne, though, and for the reason why you’d have to look at the details. First, while a lot of the tracks on Turnpike House recall earlier incarnations of Saint Etienne, major differences become apparent once you’ve given the album a couple of listens. The Beach Boys harmonies are a good example, and a point of contention amongst the fan base. Lots of people hate them because they think it interferes or competes with Sarah Cracknell’s charming melodies. I personally think they’re a valuable counterpoint; certainly “Sun In My Morning,” one of the best tracks on the album, wouldn’t be at all the same without those sunny backing harmonies.

Second, the shared set of characters and settings—Gary Stead appears in three songs, for example—lend the album a coherence you won’t find on, say, Finisterre or Tiger Bay. In fact, because the theme runs through both the music and the lyrics, this is arguably the Saint Etienne album that feels most like an album rather than just a set of songs. “Relocate” is a bit of a pain to listen to, but its city-country argument makes sense given the context of the rest of the album. It’s also a great counterpoint to “Stars Above Us,” which is just a song about the nightlife until you realize that, in light of “Relocate” and the naive disappointment of “Slow Down At The Castle,” its urban pleasures are fleeting. Another moment of interplay between tracks occurs between the morning rush of “Milk Bottle Symphony” and the evening walk home of “Side Streets.” And of course there’s the previously mentioned miniature narrative of Gary Stead.

I told a friend once that I thought this album was perhaps a bit sad. “Lightning Strikes Twice” is about a woman who thinks she can charm a man through witchcraft; “Side Streets” has someone blithely ignoring the menacing dangers of walking alone late at night; “Teenage Winter” literally recalls the fading artifacts of lost youth. And yet there’s a comfort in the fact that Saint Etienne have seen fit to devote an entire album to the small dramas and little victories of the less-than-glamorous urban life. Cracknell, Stanley and Wiggs were once the purveyors of effortless cool, writing songs about little sisters stealing your beau and telling “every girl, let’s go out tonight, everything’s gonna be alright.” Now their heart, and this album, belongs to the utterly normal people it depicts and the lives they lead. Tales From Turnpike House practically breathes, so compelling and ultimately sympathetic are the tracks; you can relate to these tracks in a way you couldn’t quite do with older Saint Etienne albums. So, more than the sterile electronic left turn of Sound Of Water or the strident manifesto of “Finisterre,” Tales From Turnpike House is a symbol of Saint Etienne’s midlife maturity, and wouldn’t you know it: even pushing 20, they still have more interesting things to say than most bands half their age.

(edited to show that Turnpike House does, indeed, exist. Shows how much I know about London. Thanks, Paul!)

[review 2005: the best of the year]

In The Clear is a dangerous album to write about. It’s not an especially interesting album, it doesn’t challenge the senses or break new ground, and it’s not far different from what people have come to expect from Ivy—effortless pop music of the purest vintage, anchored by Dominique Durand’s luxurious, accented vocals. If we were talking about the most important albums of the year, versus ones that were just my favourites of the year, In The Clear would be nowhere near the top. By nearly every measure you compare it to, In The Clear should fall well short of being on a best-of-year list. And yet, here it is.

So why is this album dangerous? Because if you asked me why I liked it, I’d shrug my shoulders, play you a couple of tracks and say, “isn’t it pretty?” Which it most certainly is. I guess I could drop a couple of two-bit collegiate words like “effervescent” and “ethereal” to describe the album, and those words do sort of fit. But the best explanation I can give of why In The Clear still sticks in my memory where so many albums this year didn’t is that it’s basically a musical anti-depressant. It’s not overly sacchrine, not too brash, not very harsh; it’s just an album of pop music you can pop in the player and drift away to for an hour. If In The Clear commits any sins, it’s perhaps the overproduced sheen. But this is Ivy we’re talking about, one of the slickest pop outfits out there. People call Ivy “sophisticated” not necessarily because they’re complex (though their songs are always layered in a web of textures), but because their music conjures up images of poolside cocktails, European beach resorts and jetsetting across the continent. Overproduced? Did you expect any different?

And anyways, it doesn’t interfere much with the songs. “Nothing Like The Sky” is one of the best pop songs of the year; it’s bliss translated into music, so weightless as to carry you into the stratosphere. The rest of the album can’t help but sink slightly compared to this first track, but to its credit Ivy doesn’t back down easily. Aside maybe from “Clear My Head,” there isn’t a weak song to be found. “Corners Of Your Mind” reminds me of Ivy’s cover of the Go-Betweens’ “Streets Of Your Town,” which is as good a track to take from as any. “I’ve Got You Memorized” is an equally peppy number, the closest Ivy gets to an outright rock song. “Keep Moving” sits at the other end of the spectrum, a fine example of the futuristic Europop Ivy occasionally tries its hand at. But really, the album is so consistently good that many of the nice things I could write about one track would apply equally as well to a bunch of others on the album. And anyways, it all pretty much amounts to the same thing: it’s all so pretty, from the opening strains of “Nothing Like The Sun” to the fade out of “Feel So Free.”

Well executed pop albums don’t get a lot of respect these days, for whatever reason. This is fine to an extent; music would go nowhere if every album was an In The Clear, an album that doesn’t at all push any envelopes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a great sounding album, or that it doesn’t put a smile on my face. If I can’t explain it any better than that, that’s my fault; you’ll just have to take my word for it.