The production is clean and rewarding – a headphones album in its own way.

Opening with Michael Jayston’s classically English voice narrating ' Have you ever been to a Harvester before' as a prelude to filtered synths enter woozily behind Cracknell’s voice, 2002’s Finisterre sets its stall early with ‘Action’ – a pure pop song removed from the more understated fare of the previous couple of albums. The reissue does a fine job serving a reminder of its brilliance, and rewarding fans with a second disc of demos and rarities that find the band sounding rougher around the edges and almost better for it at points – especially the minimal embryonic take of ‘Hug My Soul’ for interests-sake. It’s tough to understate the influence of Saint Etienne on so much music from the past ten years – for every wounded electronic group along the lines of Junior Boys., you can sure as hell assume there is a battered copy of Tiger Bay on the shelf. Further highlight ‘Like a Motorway’ finds the group in metronomic pound with synth arpeggios and 909s pushing things forward. Things get ramped up even further later in the song with a lilting key-change in the final chorus, it’s purified bliss you might as well be carried along the air by a flock of birds for all the light-headed dizziness.Įlsewhere on Tiger Bay the band provide a blueprint for groups like Air France and jj on tracks like ‘On The Shore’, with its after-hours puff where the vocals sound lackadaisically exhaled on a smoke cloud. It’s still huge, the sleight-of-hand set up of ' I’ll be there' pushes towards the cliff edge before the freewheeling, arms-in-the-air chorus drops. The highs on Tiger Bay are innumerable but ‘Hug My Soul’ remains one of the group’s very best moments, the deliciously Nineties bass and flute should sound dated, but it still fits just as it should – and Sarah Cracknell’s sultry verses drape seductively in the doorway of that chorus. There’s something quite lush about the not-quite-there organ and blissful exterior – it ramps up the drama just the right amount. Tiger Bay takes you right back and hauls you into its speed on opener ‘Urban Clearway’ with its almost pumping four-to-the-floor Europop beat and synth bass.

The latest two albums to be reissued have a ten-year age difference and see the band in two different states – at their critical best on 1994’s Tiger Bay and then at the tail end of their career on 2002’s Finisterre. It’s something they did really rather well as their back catalogue testifies. The band managed to straddle the magic three lanes of critical acclaim, a cult fan base and unashamed pop. A blazing pop band, committed in widescreen and with no bones about it, their best songs still sound classically of their time. Saint Etienne have always been a strange proposition.

Saint etienne tiger bay deluxe rar