Saint Etienne, Tiger Bay

There are several artists on this list whose entries I�d classify as "Any Of Several." This means that I could probably pick any album by that particular artist and it would qualify as one of the Big 50. Saint Etienne is probably the best example of this phenomenon. But this album in particular, one of the first I got by the group, represented a huge musical shift for me, away from ponderous prog rock and weepy singer-songwriters (though I still indulge those genres plenty) and towards a lighter, more celebratory type of music. Saint Etienne convinced me that pop music could be airy, incidental, danceable, and still beautiful, still epic, still poignant. The formula seems simple on the surface, and has been replicated by countless imitators to less inspiring ends: take two studio wizards and a hot blonde chanteuse, add some dance beats, rinse, repeat. (A friend of mine invented a new genre for them: Trip-Hop Chick-Pop.) And there is certainly no dearth of derivatives, from Club 8 to Air, many of them quite good, but for me Saint Etienne will always be the original. Which is ironic, of course, since we all know they themselves are derivative of about a million different styles, from Motown to disco to folk. Perhaps they are just the best at alchemizing these seemingly disparate elements together into an irresistable sound. There�s something more to their formula, however, than just high-fructose pop. A darker undercurrent runs through their music, one perhaps informed as much by heartbreak and mortality as the urge to shake one�s ass.

A prime example of this is Tiger Bay�s cornerstone, �Like A Motorway�: The song�s heroine spends several verses lamenting lost love, with Sarah Cracknell delivering breathy he�s gones during each bridge and the first verse proclaiming, in her right hand she holds a letter / I know this means that he has gone. Hardly a novel concept, until we learn that her man didn�t dump her; the letter was a suicide note. (She says, "I wish that he�d just left me / he�d be alive tonight.") This theme of mortality was first explored on �Avenue�, from the equally indispensable previous album So Tough, and would be continued on Good Humor with �Goodnight Jack�. How do you make a song about dead lovers catchy? Listen to any of these three songs, and Saint Etienne will show you how.

Maybe that's why I usually associate this album more with winter than anything else. Maybe it's also because I bought it on the first day of November in 1996, at Reckless Records during a weekend trip to Chicago. I was supposed to meet my ride back to Lawrence at Children's Memorial Hospital, of all places. (Don't ask me why; he was a weirdo.) Anyway, he was nearly an hour late, which was typical, so I sat in front of that hospital in the windy cold of All Saints' Day and listened to this album on my DiscMan. As far as I'm concerned, then, "On The Shore" is not about a beach at all, but about the marrow-chilling wind of an early winter in the Midwest. The achingly nostalgic "Marble Lions", the winsome "Former Lover", and the creepy "Boy Scouts Of America" are quieter, free of drum loops, built on strings and guitar, and will confound those who deign to pigeonhole Saint Etienne as a mere dancefloor novelty. Don't get me wrong, though, this album still has its upbeat moments. "I Was Born On Christmas Day" is the only Christmas song I ever need to hear, and when I was in London in December I got my wish, over the in-store speakers at every Hart's I went into. "Cool Kids Of Death" is the quintessential Saint Etienne instrumental, with a sinister bassline, eerie synth washes, and jagged piano stabs.

Another great thing about Saint Etienne is that they're so fucking prolific; just when you think you've got everything they've put out, you find something else. They've got at least one B-sides compilation for every proper album, plus the remix album, plus singles and EPs, plus innumerable best-of comps. But you can�t go wrong with Tiger Bay, and it's still my go-to record by Saint Etienne, whether it's late July and I'm driving through Iowa's thousand different shades of green, or stuck out in the cold at the beginning of a Chicago winter.

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