Saint Etienne

With Sarah Cracknell adding her songwriting talents along with that heavenly retro vocal style, Saint Etienne avoided the dreaded sophomore slump on their second album. "Mario's Café" is the key lazy sunny morning track, while "Hobart Paving" is a wistful ballad that could've been the theme to an old Julie Christie classic.

Although you've probably never heard it, Saint Etienne's So Tough is visionary pop that
ought to be a hit. The CD cover is an old photograph of a little girl – a tomboy – looking
sweetly inquisitive. She's on the verge of experience, and that sense of expectancy can
be heard in the way vocalist Sarah Cracknell embellishes the bouncy, filigreed tunes with a
lovely, clear voice: "Everyone's dreaming of all they've got to live for/Joking aro... More >

Although their roots in the pretechno dance movement render their pop strictly futuristic, classic English not-rock with pretensions to not being pretentious, I stuck around when the first song evoked the female fanworld and the second cut was a niece of Brian Eno's "Sky Saw." Add the foregrounded textures and hidden tunes of two male pop intellectuals languidly manipulating synths and samplers to Sarah Cracknell's subdued lyricism and you have an educational argument for the impressionistic pastiche that's one British pop dream. Cracknell's all-purpose pomo receptivity projects no persona. She's a chameleon, a willing mouthpiece, an aural presence whispering: "Close your eyes/Kiss the future/Junk the morgue." (Grade - A-)