Saint Etienne
(Lovers Unite)
"Hey Etienne Lover," began the email message, sent out from Saint Etienne HG last week. "Here's a pressie, a musical pressie. We've been digging through a bunch of live 'tapes' and we thought you might like to hear a few things we've found..."
As the Saint Etienne back catalog overhaul continues apace - the beloved British trio has, thus far, issued expanded editions of its first two albums, 1991's Fox Base Alpha and 1993's So Tough, along with 1997's Continental and 2000's Sound of Water (both are also 2-CD versions crammed with rarities and unreleased material) - it's become obvious that vault-trawling is fast becoming a mantra for St. E. Indeed, with a remix of Alpha about to drop (wittily dubbed Fox Base Beta), the band decided to give fans a "thank-you" in the form of the digital freebie EP at hand.
Titled Trumpton Comes Alive, it comprises "Lose That Girl," originally on 1998's Good Humor and recorded in Barcelona at the Wintercase festival in 2002; "Like A Motorway," one of the key tracks off 1994's Tiger Bay, here recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in 2007 (at the band's so-called "test" concert); and "How We Used to Live" a lengthy (9 mins.) Sound of Water track now made even lengthier (11 mins. - or, as the band itself puts it, "verging on ‘Supper's Ready' territory," har har) courtesy a 2000 performance at France's La Route du Rock festival.
The live "Lose That Girl" doesn't, er, lose any of its luster from the studio version, the pulsing, Spinners-like neodisco vibe as elegant as ever and Sarah Cracknell's deliberately offhand vocal lending a certain icy, ironic undercurrent to the proceedings. "Like A Motorway" is subtitled "Folky Version" and, with its spare arrangement - just fingerpicked guitar, flute and doubletracked Cracknell vocals - the tune takes on an entire new dimension from its clubbier electric incarnation and essentially proves the maxim that a song proves its timeworthiness if it can be stripped down to its acoustic roots and still delight the ears.
And at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, "How We used to Live" is downright magnificent, building from the merest of percussion and harpsichord into a harmony-rich, Beach Boys-styled epic that, about at the 4 ½ minute mark, begins morphing, suite-like, into anthemic "dance" mode then into an extended jazzy piano-and-vocals section reminiscent of Laura Nyro's complex compositions.
"Thanks very much, enjoy the rest of the night - I'm sure you will," enthuses Cracknell, by way of her outro for "HWUTL." Yes, Sarah, I'm sure we will - oh, and thank you for the "pressie," too.
Standout Track: "How We Used to Live" FRED MILLS
