Townsend Records

Saint Etienne

Tiger Bay

CD £12.99

May 3, 2010

Saint Etienne's third album, TIGER BAY, was the band's last release of new material prior to a nearly four-year layoff which saw singer Sarah Cracknell record a pure-pop solo album and keyboardists/arrangers/producers Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs run a dance-oriented record label. TIGER BAY, which was released in 1994, is the one Saint Etienne album on which the North London trio's love for club rhythms and sound-for-sound's-sake takes precedence over the group's crafty pop songwriting skills. The single "Hug My Soul", which appears in two radically different versions, is a ticking, occasionally swirling melange of dancefloor beats and uncommonly breathy Cracknell vocals. She uses the same technique to excellent effect on the album's pulsing opener, "Urban Clearway". The soulful "Former Lover" and "Like a Motorway" are more melancholy tunes that work just as well as the more uptempo songs. TIGER BAY is an atmospheric, hypnotic gem.