Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House

I'm member #1092 in the St. Et fanclub now, and got a copy of the Xmas 2003 single as a treat.

I got my CD in the mail after some time.

www.saintetienne.com

and click on Fanclub.

Though, I must confess the website design is a little creepy as I'm reading Haruki Murakami's Underground right now.

I liked Finisterre but did not love it. However, thanks to ye olde DC hub, I've been listening to a variety of the fan-club-only collections and my interest is resparking. It was a trying time to be a fan in the late nineties, though.

Continental may be my favorite.

Anyway, Finisterre is the only one of theirs I've loved - I think it's fantastic, I really do, and I never thought I'd ever say that about a Saint Etienne album. The new one sounds promising too.

That said, I am excited about the St Etienne album. I liked most of Good Humor and Finisterre. To me, Sound of Water was the weak link where St Etienne albums are concerned, apart from "Heart Failed".

http://www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/ltmhome.html

i am with mike a, nothing good since good humour, the orgasms of delight around here for finisterre were odd for me because it sounds so mediocre and charmless.

i don't much like the orchids, i like the singles but the albums were terrible. but that's just me. everyone else loves them.

Welcome to the Saint Etienne Fan Club. Your Membership Number is 2436

We’ve had an overwhelming response to the fan club so I’m afraid we have run out of cds, but we will send you something else in the near(ish) future. Future fan club releases will be made available for purchase (cheaply!) through the website. We will keep you posted of Etienne related news by email.

The new album “Tales from Turnpike House” is now slated for release in May – sorry to keep you waiting – but it’s a corker so hopefully you won’t mind.

Thank you for being a fan

Bob, Pete & Sarah XXX

Tales from Turnpike House is scheduled to be released the 6th of June. Here's the track listing:

Sun in my Morning
Milk Bottle Symphony
Lightning Strikes Twice
Slow Down at the Castle
Good Thing
Side Streets
Last Orders for Gary Stead
Stars above Us
Relocate (feat. David Essex)
The Birdman of EC1
Teenage Winter
Goodnight

The first single will be "Side Streets" and it's coming out May 30th.

The first few thousand copies of the album will come with a free E.P. of parent friendly children’s music including “You Can Count on Me”.

I got an old copy of "Good Humor"!

This is making me absurdly happy for some reason.

I got an old copy of "Good Humor"!

I got nothing!

xpost!

I think Bob, Pete and Sarah should crank up their CD making machine for thos fan club members.

My BRAIN hurts! (Anyway, thank you, now I am not ignorant. :-))

"Lightning strikes twice sounded quite "witchy", but also a bit rocky.. The song was also underpinned by a sort of electro-clashy synthesiser line, which made it sound very now!"

Side streets: "like all those gorgeous girl singers from the dreambabes compilations rolled into one and brought bang up to date to the 21st century"

I never got diddly-shit from the fan club this time round. But I do have a flder somewhere containing a hand-written letter from Crackers and a couple of copies of their old fanzine, Clenbuterol - do I win a prize?

http://members.lycos.nl/vavavoom/Turnpike.jpg

I may have missed it if you did. I liked what you said about Finnisterre incidentally. But then I had the opposite experience - was underwhelmed then came around to it in a big way.

Now you mention it, it reminds me of Skooldaze for the Spectrum.

It was immediately after reading this article which got me acutely riled up. I wrote a particularly vituperative blogspot on the subject but later deleted it - but in retrospect it seems to me to sum up everything that is wrong with what those Dissensus chaps call "popism."

i thuoght that stanley piece was fine (with the exception of the sanders sweep jibe)

The problem with sticking obstinately with any -ism is that you end up shutting so many things out of your world.

the voxpop 100 greatest blahblah clip shows that populate tv often have that "aye, all that tootling, it were just noise, we all had our progjazz records to impress the other boys at school, but you got home an you put your funny wig on and danced to the glitter band in the mirror, till your sister caught you", which is pretty irritating (does hornby sort of come in here?).

i give stanley the benefit of the doubt here though, i dont think hes really gone into that so much

http://s4.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2G2M8FUCD0BI22HNR38RLQD5A7

I'm Anthony Rivers, son of the 'Tony Rivers' that was mentioned on the radio show. For the person that asked, my ol' man, Tony Rivers, is a guy that thru the 70's 80's 90's etc did harmonies for anyone that was 'anyone'. He did live aid with Elton and George Michael and has worked with all the good and bad over the last 30 years. Just wanted to point a small thing out. The harmonies on 'Turnpike' are done by me n my dad. I only got involved in this project cos of my dads reputation and Bob's admiration/appreciation of my dads 60's stuff and his studiou/tour work thru the decades I mentioned earlier. This project, 'Tales From Turnpike House' is one of if not the most enjoyable things we've ever done. All I wanted to point out was this...... Altho my dads reputation will always make everyone assume that his involvement is paramount, re Sean Rowley's show, I'd just like it stated here that I did, with my fathers blessing, most of the harmony arranging /singing on 'Turnpike'. It's the best thing I've ever worked on I've had a finished copy for months and I promise it's almost the only thing I listen to, regardless of our involvement. I'm hoping that when you all hear it you'll love it too

Indeed!

where? what (like?)? please

upon initial listenings, i feel this is one of the rare cases where the "best album of their career" moniker can be applied.

Turnpike House isn't fictional, it's off Goswell Rd in EC1, near City University.

"Teenage Winter" is fanastic, and clearly a sequel to the title track to Finisterre.

YSI please?

as Brian Wilson said for 30 or so years...

First of all, why the fuck is Boob even writing for The Times? It's a right wing paper. He must know that. Secondly, he's opted to write an article about race for a right wing newspaper. Fire, gasoline, etc. So what is his article's position on race? Well, it denigrates black music and elevates white music in its place. It does this using the cloak of "the return of the repressed". Black music is cool and canonical, Boob argues, and therefore dominant. People say they like it even when they don't. Plucky little white acts like, er, Slade are getting a raw deal. Boob explictly dismisses "cool values" but tries to replace them with a new cool which is basically the cool values without the black racial content (although King Tubby is allowed in).

The racial theme enters early. The Times' tagline reads: "Admit it, you're white-bread munching trash who prefers Slade to Ray Charles. Do you wanna be in my gang?"

"Admit it": prepare for polemic, here comes the return of the (racist) repressed! So, "guilty pleasures", anyone? Political incorrectness in The Times, gasp! Hardly polemic in the context, is it?

"White-bread-munching trash": (they left out the "white" bit of trash, but it's implied). White = white bread = white trash = working class = cool. So Ray Charles can be chased out by Slade, and Slade get to partake in the definition of cool which previously only black artists were heir to. Black artists, meanwhile, are tarred by constant references milquetoast black or black-friendly acts like Charles and Eddie, Bob Marley, Top 10 reggae.

And "wanna be in my gang" -- a Gary Glitter line? So where's the paragraph arguing for critical rehabilitation of Gazza, then? Ah, it's not there. Except subliminally, in the strapline.

Boob goes on to argue that where white people claim to have been influenced by black music, they're bullshitting or lying or remembering selectively. He denigrates white members of the rock canon (Waits, Lennon, Patti Smith) only to replace them with other whites in the pop canon (Essex, McCartney, Debbie Harry). He suffers from selective memory himself, though. He remembers that John Lydon played Peter Hammill on the Nicky Horne Show but forgets that he also played Dr Alimentado’s “Best Dressed Chicken in Town”.

And he stops short of making explicit his claim that popism is "the new cool", because then he couldn't pose as the kind of brittle peevish loser who reads The Times or votes Repulican in the US. He needs to denigrate "cool" without building a claim to a new (racially purged) form of cool so that he can appeal to people who say "I'm old and I live in Croydon and Bob is right, the curse of the cool should be banished". Yeah, Times-reading popism fans who don't want a new form of cool declared, just the old one killed off.

This is what happens when all that Union Jack waving Britpop rubbish reaches middle age and gets a phonecall from the editor of The Times. Since Boob was riding the Wicker Folk bandwagon recently, it really suggests that what appealed to him about folk music was also its lack of black.

You know, go and read the article and tease out some tamer, more palatable meaning from it if you can. But I suspect that if you're on this thread you've already got your St Etienne biometric ID card anyway. You don't care that you never received your free gift. You won't care that Boob is a reactionary, and your subjective perception of the marvels of the new album won't be affected by his views one white. Sorry, whit.

but get your knickers in a wad, HE WROTE FOR THE TIMES. BANISH ALL RIGHT WING HEATHENS FOR THEY ARE THE SCUM OF THE EARTH

White writers Nigella Lawson and John Aizlewood have given "fabulously embarrassing" accounts of their early love of white music (Israeli folk music and Dexy's), whereas "world music bigwig Angelique Kidjo" (black) and Danny Kelly (white) were "faking their credentials" when they claimed to have been immersed in black music in their early years.

Notice that Angelique is a "bigwig" and that Danny was once the editor of the NME. They are, in the words of the article's title, "faking it". Coolblack has to be associated with power in order for the attack on it to seem legitimate. Coolness/blackness/power is, though, a lie, inauthentic, fake. The "real" aligns with embarrassment/whiteness/exclusion. And although Boob's coolwhite canon is being proposed in coolblack canon's stead, it cannot be presented explicitly as cool or powerful or real, because then black music, dethroned and powerless and fake, becomes the outsider once more, and threatens to storm the bastions with a big head of angry steam and some righteous thunder.

P.S. "Endless lists of officially sanctioned classics have distorted our memories and the true history of pop." Being a great 50 word blurb man, he should know. But although that sunshine pop list he did for Mojo was great, perhaps he should have included some 5th Dimension?

All irrelevant because not many people think only card carrying lefties can have valid views on the issues Stanley is writing about.

what advert is this from? It's killing me.

(NB, is there a distinction being drawn between "popism" and "poptimism"? I have seen them used interchangeably, but think they're quite different, certainly, Bob Stanley has always struck me as a bit popist, but as a poptimist myself, I don't care about intentions and processes, only the product. And this new album is very good indeed. "Side Streets" bizarre choice of single, though)

That said, this idea that people select things because of their "lack of black", oh, fuck's sake, pull the other one, I didn't believe this when whoever who wrote it wrote that boring students like Radiohead because Thom Yorke's piteous whine was as far removed from Africa as it was possible to get, and this makes about as much sense now.

100% accurate, it is uncanny.

It is WEIGHTY. The very very best bits (i.e. "Lightning Strikes Twice", at the moment) seem to do the opposite of what things like "Action" did - Finisterre was godlike genius obviously but very restrained and sparing. This isn't, it is full-fat. Most of the tracks shoehorn as much top/middle/bottom in as possible. It is the St Etienne album with the most bottom ever, easily. It is very hyper-ultra-mega-There, hefty blocks of saturated colour, and, things ('maximalist' is what I am getting at here, probably). On first play it feels disorientatingly Upfront, for them. You kind of feel it should sink, inevitably it SOARS. They are being all totally-equal to all tasks, JOY.

They seem to be worrying less about what they can get away with and just going for it, e.g. the 'concept' which is probably my least favourite thing about it but doesn't end up strangling it at all. "Gary Stead" and to a lesser extent "Teenage Winter" are sparkly Magpie sludgerock, I can't think of anything they've done before that's much like this. Superficially it's probably closer to Good Humor than any of the others (Proper Instruments/Proper BandUnit Band) but not really, there is so much, um, more (and, y'know, I really love Good Humor). SO fantastic.

http://s28.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1SQE4C5L0JYQK28QRACEVB7C72
(Stars Above Us)

It really is! 'Lightning Strikes Twice' or 'A Good Thing', surely.

The Xenomania input is really striking here, and is making me wonder whether Sarah Cracknell has always sounded like Kylie and if so why no one has noticed this before.

And all this on top of a lyric that is actually a little menacing (a walk through a potentially dodgy neighborhood, with the possibility that Sarah might "get it" tomorrow)? Brilliance.

For example I think the dismissal of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrongs Porgy and Bess recording and Angelique Kidjo’s appreciation of it is well off. It’s such an all-pervasive – Popular - record that’s it’s hardly a false or needlessly elitist choice for a first musical love, especially if you’re going to jazz school.

And although Boob's coolwhite canon is being proposed in coolblack canon's stead, it cannot be presented explicitly as cool or powerful or real, because then black music, dethroned and powerless and fake, becomes the outsider once more, and threatens to storm the bastions with a big head of angry steam and some righteous thunder.

I really don’t understand how dismissing (fairly or unfairly) Tom Waites or Nick Drake does anything to undermine “coolblack”. As I understand the article, top ten Reggae is invoked in the same way that McCartney is invoked against Lennon, something Kid Jenson had to playlist as opposed to some esoteric secret, therefore uncool and as such, in this article’s view good. Not that I agree with that idea particularly, but it isn’t fair - indeed it’s barely coherent - to call it racist.

Possibly. I tend to think that he's also fighting needless wars, maybe for the sake of Times readers who don't want to have to think too much. I'm not sure that Stanley realises that some of us listened to both progjazz AND the Glitter Band in our youth (see Koons '74 for proof).

OTM. The ancient rock n roll / (trad) jazz schism will never die in a certain mindset I think. Though I didn’t listen to the Glitter Band or progjazz in my youth; generational.

Wish I could talk about the record, but I guess that’s going to have to wait a month.

It is Girls Aloud x "Eleanor Rigby", sort of (this may be pushing it)

Also love how "Slow Down At The Castle" uses that same sound that goes over the end of Sugababes' "Million Different Ways".

(the other one expired)

It's also my local pub in Stamford Hill.

But, please, "Stars Above Us" as a single, it could also be the "Lady (Hear Me Tonight)" of 2005 if released properly, which it won't be, obviously, but anyway.

Ouch. No I didn't. A failure to read this thread properly, obviously, since such was reported on March 17. Ah well.

(It of course also means that I hadn't noticed the kiddypopness of the other 5 tracks, and I put it to you that esp. "Excitations" does not possess such a quality at all)

omg MINDMELD, I was talking to someone last night about how the concept Xenomania + this concept = Girls Aloud + 'Eleanor Rigby'. Though oddly a better comparator is Rachel Stevens - who Xenomania have never worked with.

I put it to you that esp. "Excitations" does not possess such a quality at all

I agree with this. Also I want to know who the kindly gent on "Bedfordshire" is, I feel I should, and, don't.

"Because, green is the colour of Thunderbird 2!"
"That's right! That's absolutely right."

True! especially on "Lightning Strikes Twice".

I'm glad I'm not dissappointed at all about this album cause I listened to "Side Streets" and "Sun in my Morning" first and thought uh-oh this is going to be all minimalist/organic/acoustic.

I pretty much agree with everybody in that "Relocate" and "Last Orders..." are not that good. Although I really only don't like the guitar on "Last Orders..."

I've just discovered one of those little sequels (more like links) between St Etienne outputs (e.g. the same "la la-la-la-la-la" on "Half Timbered" and "Late Morning"). So maybe its just delusion, but the
mandolin? (I don't really know what it is) on "Bird Man of EC1" reminded me to the very last bit at the end of "Finisterre". I wonder if they do this on purpose.

Yes, this is insane indeed! I've just found out that they may release "Stars Above Us" next though.

Though i do really like the david essex track,,

People who think Tiger Bay is their best will really love it, esp those who love the songs where you feel as if Sarah Cracknell is sort of the omniscient narrator telling the human stories amidst the urban decay, or if "Like A Motorway" is your favourite St Et song, etc. But the production - HEAPS of oomph, is certainly not that far from Finisterre though certainly what that was and MORE.

It's one of those records which has more force when you've got a long history with the band. I think if you're somewhere around 30 and associate Foxbase Alpha with being a teenager, then Teenage Winter is unbearably poignant - all that stuff about neglected vinyl and pointless ebay purchases and pub jukeboxes being replaced by bar staff playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There are countless songs which nail what it's like to be a teenager but very few that capture the feeling of being 31, for obvious reasons. I like the way the mere existence of the kids' album explains the main record's preoccupation with moving on, or at least I assume it does.

Have the drugged-out friend of a college roomate to thank for being such a longtime fan. Guy STOLE my copy of a Creation Dance compilation I'd gotten in London the previous semester that had a tab of Bart Simpson acid hidden inside the cd case (Wonder if he ever found that). But he LEFT a copy of Foxbase Alpha in my dormroom in '91.

So I can remember my reaction to pretty much everything that's come out during their career;

So Tough - Ecstatic. A rich follow up to Foxbase. If I'm honest it hasn't aged well, but it was literally crammed with samples in a way that hadn't been done in well ... since maybe Paul's Boutique? And don't they even SAMPLE Paul's Boutique?

Tiger Bay - Not overly thrilled about it. But some decent tracks. The mixes of Like a Motorway by Autechre, David Holmes, Chemical Bros far superior to the original. Pale Movie is classic defined. On The Shore and Marble Lions are genius.

Continental - Not an album proper, but still -- worth every penny. 'Sometimes In Winter!'

Good Humor - Maybe their best album. Sylvie loses points for an annoying chorus, but otherwise this is a disc you can play from start to finish without ever having to FF.

Sound of Water - Maybe a drop in QC, but can't argue with Heart Failed, How We Used To Live, Sycamore and Downey, CA.

Finisterre -- I'll take whatever I can get by this point, but still some goodies including, B92!

Side Streets sounds decent, but I'd like to hear this other track you are all talking about ...

who's doing the monologue on teenage winter?

disappointed in the songwriting on the kids thing, perhaps stupidly

This and "Lightning Strikes Twice" are probably still two my nominal favourites but I love "Gary Stead" more and more and more every time I listen. The guitars are what clinch it for me, they make it the most 'aggro' thing they've ever done (this all relative, though).

I think "Side Streets" as a single works if you see it as a very concentrated attempt to make a very stereotypically Radio 2 sort of record (grown-up gentle swingy harmony pop, although my perception of what constitutes a 'radio 2 record' these days is probably totally misguided). As if they realised that even though the Xeno-tracks would in theory slot perfectly next to "Love Machine" on radio 1, they are not deluding themselves that they have a hope in hell of actually getting playlisted on there nowadays (I have no idea if Radio 2 or anyone else played "Side Streets" at all).

The girl in the room on the bottom right of the sleeve has a Foxbase Alpha poster on her wall. What an excellent thing.

A cafe, where the bet is, if you can eat everything on the menu, you don't have to pay. For some reason, the cafe has "inferior" cola as well as Pepsi (No cafe does this). Kid is "bet's off" all the other kids are "You're not going to make him drink that, Stanley?" waiter rips bill up and is "ah, get out of here! You kill me you know that..."

I really wanted to like it, but it’s just not happening.

(Surely Amateur or The More You Know are more "aggro" than Last Orders For Gary Stead..?)

I'm wondering if I can obsess over it or not. It feels, in shape, similar to Tiger Bay. Nothing huge overpowering the structure of the overall album (where So Tough falls down a little) but not thrown together in the jarring way that Finisterre seemed to be.

It doesn't feel as great as Tiger Bay, though (and I'm talking about the longer version of Tiger Bay here). Few of the songs have the immediate impact of Hug My Soul. I suspect, like Tiger Bay, my favourites will become the ones that are the less obvious favourites, but I'm not seeing a Marble Lions here. I felt disappointed on the first listen. I'm feeling happier with it as I listen more.

The harmonies, which started this thread, spoil the record rather. Take them away and you've got a solid album that might not come to match The Great TB but that I might come to regard as one of their better albums in time.

As for Milk Bottle Symphony - have St. Etienne ever done something so St. Etienne? That song deserves its own thread. I still haven't decided whether its everything they do marvellously distilled or a patchwork St.-Etienne-by-numbers.

This is becoming rather a long post. I don't think me, Saint Etienne and succinctness go together.

A shame, it could have been a kitsch masterpiece.

I do quite like the concept. I like the fact that the album seems to take place within the space of one day. Its the concept that makes the link to Tiger Bay (why do I KEEP typing "Tiger Gay?") so obvious I suppose (and Continental, for my money their 2nd best).

Sun In My Morning sounds, at the moment, like a song that was going to go into a beautiful, lush sounding chorus but ended up being rather flat instead. Again, perhaps I'll like it better in time.

Turnpike doesn't seem as interested in playing with/on the Dancefloor as Tiger. Even the Xenomania productions seem a bit meh.

(Why did i put a posessive ' when i typed Beach Boys in my last post??)

As for Milk Bottle Symphony - have St. Etienne ever done something so St. Etienne? That song deserves its own thread. I still haven't decided whether its everything they do marvellously distilled or a patchwork St.-Etienne-by-numbers.

OTM - i need to listen to it more, but i'm not sure if you couldn't apply that thought to the whole record...

well that's their greatest song ever, so no surprise...but Teenage Winter is close

This is not a bad thing, but I think High Life is a bit better.

I feel very disloyal saying that..

The references to tankers, urban clearways, dilapidated cinemas and tankers all tie in to that, or so it seems to me.

I've never been. I'm torn between wanting to visit, just because..(rather sadly, I have been to Mario's Cafe) and staying away.

The bastards.

They've done it again.

Wrong-footed me. Dared me to shrug my shoulders at the top of this thread.

And then I listened to the thing, on my Discman, on a 31-degrees-in-the-shade Saturday, walking from Oxford Street to Chalk Farm.

The benign abandonment of these sunny, empty streets in the Bloomsbury/Euston/Regent's Park triangle.

The only shop open in Great Titchfield Street was - you guessed it - a tanning salon (not, alas, the Tropicana Tanning Salon).

In a semi-derelict newsagents just off Wells Street to buy a much-needed bottle of water, the elderly proprietor invites me to admire her nice young terrier.

Round the nexus of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. Blocks of flats which look like displaced houses from the road which ran parallel to the Thwaites brewery. A white-haired, tanned, pullovered fiftysomething wanders past me with a watering can. He is probably extremely well-known, but I don't stop to look at him.

Jumping over the end of Cleveland Street, the Tower looking down upon me ruefully, and not quite protectively.

Even the main traffic lights on Euston Road appear to change in super-slow motion on a day as liquid as this.

Down the shadowed side of Osnaburgh Street, across from the former insurance office where Laura briefly worked too many years ago, below the windows of the flat where once Kenneth Williams lived; a smaller and pokier place than you'd expect. Two dusty front windows, only one open. Everything in this street appears to be on the brink of turning into dust - disused factories, Houses which don't seem to House anyone -

"throws a gown over every place I've been
And every little dream"

The long, peopleless procedural that is Albany Street. Almost peopleless, at any rate. A group of backpacking students stop at a pub, and realise dolefully that it's not open yet. "Don't worry," says one, "there's another one just up the road that's definitely open." And indeed there is - the Cafe of Good Hope. Across the street from where Henry Mayhew once lived.

The communality of the poor. Everybody talks about the enclosed individual prisons of London. No one ventures outside their room, talks to anyone else, etc.

"I walk these side streets alone"

But you wouldn't know it from round about Robert Street. There's an estate there, not quite the Regent's Park Estate from whence sprang Flowered Up and where the components of Militant Esthetix continue to dwell. People amble out, smiling, talking to each other, passing cordial greetings, eyeing me with suspicion. Should I be here?

"She knows this has to end"

It's easy to feel out of place. I rest my legs at a bus stop. Two people join me; a crew-cut twentysomething in shorts and iPod, swaying his arms and tapping his feet, enraptured, glancing around to see if anyone else can feel it, but I can't even hear what he's listening to. To my left, a distinguished-looking, grey-haired, bespectacled fiftysomething, possibly an Independent leader writer, looking benign rather than bemused.

The church at Redhill Street whose clock seems to have long stopped. The nearly luminous redbrick which runs in the little side street behind it, but which proves to lead to nothing except the sectioned-off wall of a school playground. I make my way back to the main drag, and a black woman looks at me exceptionally dubiously.

The shops here are standard, but perhaps all that is needed. A Post Office which at 11:45 in the morning is already closed. A dry cleaners. A betting shop. A tanning salon (and no baker). A piano shop. Why the piano shops in out-of-the-way locations? I recall Courtney Pianos in Botley Road, across the street from where once we lived. The idea was that once we got a proper house we'd get in a piano (there wasn't enough room for one in the flat) and I'd teach Laura to play it.

Further down, past more closed-down depots and warehouses, along whose walls I walk directly as the shade does not penetrate more than a couple of inches beyond them, the street becomes distinctly more rural (you could almost be walking down a street in Harrogate, or Blantyre) and delicately more opulent. To my left, the complex of backs-to-the-street Cumberland Terrace pied-a-terres wherein '70s rock stars hang their spurs during the week. To my right, past the TA barracks, I suddenly see Cherry Tree Lane from Mary Poppins, identical in every detail and blossom. Park Village West - what is this elysium doing on the outskirts of Camden? And such transcendence is not limited to those of affluent means; back in the estate, there was a block called Kelso House. Through the entrance portal I can view an unbelievably light and colourful bouquet of garden and enchantment. Also closed off to me.

"We need some space"
"I said I'd miss my mates"

I'm now at the top of Albany Street, at the junction where the outflow from Camden meets the back end of London Zoo.

"Let's build a zoo!...Here they come! Two by two by two by two..."

I opt not to suffocate in the drowning human traffic of Camden proper so make my way down Gloucester Avenue, past the LMC, before emerging at Chalk Farm, en route to one of the most magical days I can remember having for a long, long time.

"Stars above us/Cars below us/Nothing can touch us, baby"

Tales From Turnpike House is about escape. The Stars are regularly referenced in contrast to the "grey" (and recall the grey-on-white-on-grey design of the Finisterre sleeve; what was that about "I love to get lost in the city" and how did that end up as "Slow down at the Castle?").

(in Ryman's 253, remember, the fatal tube crash occurs at the Elephant and Castle - the End of the Line. Beyond that, it's the multiple Congo deltas of Old Kent, Walworth, Camberwell, every man for himself)

It's about a day in a dozen lives; A Grand Don't Come For Free multiplied by side one of 'Til The Band Comes In with a libretto by Georges Perec and scored by - well, scored by the Rivers (the absence of rivers is tangible in the record's story).

There isn't much unalloyed joy in TFTH; the nearest thing to an uplifting song being the hopelessly hopeful "Sun In The Morning," and even the temporary rooftop relief of "Stars Above Us" is tempered by the knowledge that, 14 years after "Nothing Can Stop Us," the reassuring reflex is now "nothing can touch us." The fear of being touched ("Side Streets" is remarkable; music by Tom Jobim, lyrical plot by "Robert De Niro's Waiting." The not-particularly-hidden deathwish of "Maybe I'll get it tomorrow") means that no one can touch you; or, like Gary Stead, you end up drinking yourself into - more drinks. He'll lambast his long-suffering partner or the "Aussie bar staff" playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he invariably ends up buying another round at the Hatton Fan.

The remarkable way in which the rhythm template from "My Heartbeat" is used as a springboard for other diversionary/introductory tactics on "Milk Bottle Symphony." The echoing fade of "away" into non-human static on "Slow Down At The Castle." The perversity of "A Good Thing" being far more Xenomania-sounding than the two Xenomania-assisted songs (but how Xenomania-like was "Shower Scene" from Finisterre?) and piercing something vital with Cracknell's "it's all for nothing" refrain.

The way in which the frustrated vaudeville waltz of "Relocate" suddenly atomises into an abstract Julian Opie landscape straight off the bluer corners of Sound Of Water halfway through, and how apt it is that David Essex now sounds more like Bowie than ever ("Sounds like a load of balls!").

The heartbreaking instrumental fragment of "The Birdman Of EC1" which appears to have flown off somewhere between the Cocteau Twins' "Beatrix" and Plaid's "Eyen."

And "Teenage Winter" - my God, what a song, what a closedown, what a last-bit-of-Escalator Over The Hill gone pop, where all the disparate voices return for their reluctant curtain calls as the stage collapses around them - nothing's what it used to be, that two copies of "Every Loser Wins" don't add up to a winner, that a Subbuteo '81/2 catalogue in the drawer ISN'T A SUBSTITUTE - and we realise horribly what growing up actually means; not so much the halycon grief of Pet Sounds, but "mums with pushchairs outside Sainsbury's with tears in their eyes."

But at least the mums with pushchairs can still connect on even an elementary level; the narrator of "Sun In The Morning" returns for a grief-stricken "Goodnight" as Tony Rivers' "Our Prayer" harmonies seem to indicate that there won't be another morning. Another potentially perfect day lost. No reassurance. Park your bike in the alley.

And yet there is an escape route. Or perhaps it's a dream within a dream in the same way as that central demo section of the third Bill Fay album. I don't know whether I would have reacted to TFTH in as passionate a way as I have if there hadn't been Up The Wooden Hill, a quarter-hour taster for an upcoming "children's record." Because in these 15 or so minutes exists the life and spirit more or less absent from the main album's story. "You Can Count On Me" is Chinn and Chapman reshaping Cornelius' "Count Five Or Six." "Barnyard Brouhaha" dares to be one nanoinch's breath away from "Crazy Frog." "Let's Build A Zoo" and "Excitation" together give us perhaps the sexiest vocal performances of Cracknell's career - here she's happy, mischievous, provocative; Deee-Lite x Mud + Sweet Exorcist (and get that "suffragette" line in "Excitation"! For kids, did they say?).

But then there's something else. The hidden ending to the album proper. David Essex returns in "Bedfordshire" presumably having been convinced to move to the country. With his hitherto unheard son, he ventures to take him on a walk, and there's an immensely poignant acoustic reverie (not that far from Van Morrison's "Coney Island," really) which sounds as though the cynical old geezer has rediscovered life via his child ("It's green 'cos - that's the colour of Thunderbird 2!" "You're right, son! You're absolutely right!"). Here, we are moved away from the easy associatives of old Small Faces album tracks (but here's another reason for my passion - calling songs "Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire" or "Night Owl" means you're inadvertently referencing The Songs Of Our Lives) towards something more affecting. But more real? At the end, Essex turns towards his child, towards us, and informs us that "If you close your eyes, you can see anything you like." So they may well still be in Turnpike House. But they have managed to realise the wonder of what's on their doorstep. Maybe.

But "Night Owl" returns us to the grief of "Goodnight" - Cracknell sitting alone, downstairs, at midnight, paranoid about the creak on the stairs (it's the same protagonist as "Side Streets"), wondering what she could have done to make her life better. A children's album? Only in the same way that side two of Tiger Bay was a children's album. The urge to return to childhood. The fear of now. The fear of death, violent or natural.

On the bus home, some considerable time later, there is a young girl sitting at the front of the top deck of the bus. As the bus crosses Waterloo Bridge she gives an involuntary gasp of shock and wonder. It was obviously the first time she'd seen the view. What Saint Etienne tell us is that we all gave that gasp at some stage in our lives - in my case, when I was no more than five or six - and that the challenge is to recapture that gasp and make it work for you, so that your existence can be (re)turned into (a) life.

Oh no it bloody didn't, grumble grumble. He's only on He's On The Phone.

(somewhere I have an Etienne Daho album, on cassette, that I bought during a school trip to the Pas de Calais in 1992. Comme un Igloo, c'est classique!)

I don't like Milk Bottle Symphony *because* it's too stereotypically a St. Et. song. It's verging on trying-too-hard-to-do-what-people-expect. And Let's Build A Zoo is so damn catchy, it's been stuck in my head since I first heard it last Monday.

Oh yes, and that call centre voice on "Teenage Winter" - "Can I speak to Mr G Staid please?" - is pretty chilling in its context.

I was going to say this was preposterous, then I remembered how big Schnappi Das Kleines Krokodil has been in Europe for the last six months. It really could work.

Ah yes, but the SUPERIOR version had it on..

*awaits howls of anger*

-- edward o (edwardo...), June 20th, 2005.

I still think it is preposterous. Both the claim that it could make number one and the assertion that its any good.

That said, I've only been able to bring myself to listen once. Is it a grower??

Marcello is right (great post, btw), it's an awfully long time since "Nothing Can Stop Us Now", and "Stars Above Us" is the perfect flipside for today - glorious lead guitar work underlying each line. A bit surprising that they didn't release it as the first single? But would it have been playlisted on Radio 2 as apparently "Side Streets" - rather ironically - was? It sounds like it ought to be a really big summer hit, the rhythm, melody and that guitar bit all make it sound like the sort of dance-pop *hit* that the Daft Punk of old might have made in their day.

The album definitely is a 'grower', it all coheres much more on subsequent listens. In sound and dynamics it is very different from "The Sound of Water" but is definitely closer to that record in thematics and mood than to "Finisterre".

"For Lindy Wiggs 1941-2004"

I presume she was Pete's mum, and that because she was only 63, serious illness was involved.

It all seems to come back to remembrance in the end.

But hopefully I'll change my mind!

wha? that was the most pathetic live performance I've ever seen, she may have just stuck her album on, I've seen soundchecking roadies with more stage presence.

Strange - every other report I've seen said she was preciously cute, but a terrible performer. Which I can believe after reading the Pitchfork interview - I don't remember how young she is, but she sounded it. I still love her album, though.

As far as TFTH, I'm a big SE fan, but (still) have to agree with Tim above: much more the perfect idea of a SE album than the actual thing. I just find that the whole thing sounds a little thin.

Yes!

People kept telling me her set didn't work and that she actually used a lyric sheet the whole way through.

With TFTH though I liked it straightway and went straight through to being sick of it within about 2 weeks.

I am far more Finisterre-centric at the moment, for briskness, and skeleton synthetics. I wonder if maybe Turnpike is too clean and glossy to endure as, say, Tiger Bay has. It is still near-perfect, obv.

BUT, yes, I tend to think of Turnpike as having lovely creaky warm period pieces and shiny succulent synthpop excursions and not much overlap between the two, which was never really the case before. I don't know that I think this is particularly a good thing or a bad thing, but you could definitely argue that they've made it too easy for us, there's maybe a little less to discover in each track than previously (must still stress that I love Turnpike to bits, it is brilliant nevertheless, and this doesn't necessarily apply to every single track; "Teenage Winter" was more of a slowly-unfurling slowburner, for example)

Sarah, Bob & Pete XXXX

It's set on July 7, 2005 and as such was a fairly unsettling experience for me. It's an un-settled film. DVD early next year apparently. I get the impression that the DVD of "Finisterre" has sold well nough that getting the new one out might be a less protracted process.

01 Side Streets
02 A Good Thing
03 Sun in My Morning
04 Milk Bottle Symphony
05 Dream Lover
06 Lightning Strikes Twice
07 Slow Down at the Castle
08 Oh My
09 Last Orders for Gary Stead
10 I'm Falling
11 Stars Above Us
12 Teenage Winter
13 Goodnight

Cheers
Lovers HQ

Chirst it's an embarrassment isn't it! Absolutely awful, my least favourite St Et tune by a country mile.

this line sums up the whole album, record shops that dont exist anymore, bars that are long gone,i think the pervading feel of nostalgia is just too much for me. im not sure if thats quite it though

just as its looking back at 94 looking back at 74, its a camden record, they've always stuck me as camden, rather than london, except its primrose hill now. the cultural 'references' seem a bit...much now

i like some of it though,

sun in my morning is a promising start, the chorus works very well, the flutes a nice touch

birdman of ec1, the instrumental, is great, ephemeral, vdp/brian

teenage winter seems to be the crux of the album, all that is good about it, all that is bad about it. the spoken word part reminded me a lot of the piano magic track, er, snow drums, i think

its...cosy

awesome, though. the song that ended up closing it was a terrific version of "nothing can stop us". first time i've seen 'em, good times.

b g e o g h a g a n @@@@ gm41l.com

Nice Price consists of demo or rough mixes of all the tracks listed:

Nothing Can Stop Us
7 Ways 2 Love
Who Do You Think You Are
Hobart Paving
Like A Motorway
Former Lover
Western Wind
Angel
Burnt Out Car
Sylvie
Madeleine
Lose That Girl
Heart Failed
How We Used To Live
Milk Bottle Symphony
Goodnight

only 3/4 way through my first listen but initial thoughts are: Hobart Paving = classic, wonderful version, quite diff. to other mixes i've heard..Like A Motorway = WTF? Good thing they redid this version...Western Wind = Awesome acoustic version...in general, these versions are as good as the versions we know and love, however Like A Motorway is a major disappointment.

'slow down at the castle' has the best moment on 'turnpike house', with that morricone-esque swell towards the end. i'm thinking this might be their best album! (possible competition: good humor, tiger bay)

"Teenage Winter" sounds an awful lot like the 10cc-related Hotlegs's "Today":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gib9u31UR0

(as featured on the Lovefingers compilation from last year) – though is that a sample or recreation?