Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, or at least till it comes back. Saint Etienne are one of those bands who, like Teenage Fanclub, were hardly the subject of extensive search parties when missing in action yet now that they are back with us, are being greeted like long lost (rich) relatives. And just like TFC, little seems to have changed in the collective Wiggs, Stanley and Cracknell world.
As a trio they always seemed to favour style over content and Tales From Turnpike House is no exception. Hung loosely together as a concept album about London, it aims to paint a big picture but ends up as a collection of half formed sketches. Some of the ideas and characters are interesting but the band don’t really have it in them to flesh out the concepts into real drama and even when they do get it right (the quietly menacing ‘Side Streets’, the spoken intro to ‘Teenage Winter’) the mind wanders to Mike Skinner and the fact that he manages to say more about modern urban life in one song than the whole of this album.
Musically it’s even further off the mark. Quite how a mish mash of bossa nova beats and the sickly sweet pop production of Xenomania is supposed to represent the sound of London is anyone’s guess. Matters are also not particularly helped by the fact that whatever voice Sarah Cracknell once had has fast diminished into next to nothing and this being Saint Etienne there has to be more than a fair share of iconic ironic kitsch – reaching a nadir with the brutal, David Essex assisted ‘Relocate’.
From The Clash to The Libertines, Blur to M.I.A., London has been the muse to many classic albums down the years. This is not one of them.