Finisterre

But I'm really warming to it now - "Action" sounds much better in the context of the album, the electro stuff works really well for them ("Shower Scene" and "New Thing" are marvellous, and I even like "Amateur"), "Soft Like Me" is irresistible fun and "The Way We Live Now" is excellent - stirring, grand etc. which is probably how I like Saint Etienne best, all things considered.

Did anyone else see them at the Royal Festival hall last night? It was v good - they started off with a few SoW numbers, then played the whole of the new one backed with lovely films of london (as you'd expect!), and finished with a couple of old ones - hobart paving (inc sarah missing a few notes and forgetting the words!) and finished with nothing can stop us now and loads of people getting up on the stage. Lovely.

PP - broadcast were good in support too

Piss off with your crappy contradictions.

I am currently agonizing about how to review this especially given the audience I'll be reviewing it for -- i.e., one I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine much liking "Soft Like Me." It's very difficult to say anything about without spending thousands of words picking apart the details (which I look forward to from Marcello) -- in capsule form it's, well, another Saint Etienne record, good bits and dull bits, backtracks and progressions, successes and failures. It's also complicating that I only came to Saint Etienne over the past three years, and thus probably feel the scale of their transitions less: they could go back to doing "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" over and over and I doubt I'd get too much of a sense of regression.

I like the last two albums, though they have now been demurely pissed over (good phrase, alex, I'm going to try to drop it in conversation at some point), but it feels like they've given up trying to mature as artists and thought "fuck it, let's do what we're good at".

Tim, I also thought "Action" sounded better in context of the whole, which is odd because it's the first song. How does that work, then?

There's a well-known Italian prog rock band named Finisterre as well...

I think as a first single it simultaneously sounds slight and as if it's trying too hard - afraid to go full-on filter-house but locking in the anthemic chorus nonetheless. The way the album version more slowly emerges out of the haze at the beginning makes it slightness seem less like a fear of pop and more like an acknowledgement of uncertainty, the choruses less forced and more transcendental. I think "Hug My Soul" was similarly dependent on context, incidentally.

There's a "Mr. Joshua Edit" of "Action" on the single which housifies it (basically turning it into a sister of "Shower Scene") and sounds a million times better as a standalone piece.

I've decided that maybe part of what prevents Finisterre from reaching the heights that Tiger Bay scales for me is the conscious adoption of a simpler form of narrative. I love all the third-person stories on Tiger Bay (eg. "He's On The Phone", "I Buy American Records", "Like A Motorway", "Pale Movie") which transform Sarah into a wizened angel of suburbia, and drape a diffuse meloncholia and ennui over everything - it's like finding faded photos of the people who once lived in the mansion you've just moved into. Finisterre is more direct lyrically, but as a result there's less of that sense of private mysteries cloaking unutterable sadnesses which makes Tiger Bay so endlessly compelling for me.

I like the third-person narrative theory, too, "He's On The Phone", especially, and "Like A Motorway" move me for precisely those reasons. I rarely listen to lyrics carefully but they keep me transfixed.

I'm halfway through listening Finisterre for the fourth time now and it's getting better and better.

I've already made my own CD-R of the album with the Mr. Joshua edit version replacing the original (is this Maurice Joshua???). It's like night and day.

Also, "Shower Scene" is the best thing I've heard all week (although I don't get "chalice" - does anybody remember "we used to lick chalice" or something on an old hardcore track?).

I agree with Nick.

http://www.crtvg.es/ingles/camweb/cfisterra.html

...if you've go the right plug-in installed.

It's like calling your album 'John o' Groats' really. Or 'Lizard Point'. And who would do that?

Oh you most certainly will Robin, although that said I've decided that you underrated Sound Of Water quite dramatically. I can't decide whether or not I prefer Finisterre to SoW; in some ways SoW might just beat it by virtue of "Sycamore" alone.

or 'The Joshua Tree'.

The death of Finisterre

I do.

The CoM review is a marvel - hope the recd turns out to be half as good when I finally get around to hearing it.

wasn't this a song by mccarthy?

Are you a McCarthy fan, Marcello (I find it hard to believe you are), or is that just a nugget of assorted pop knowledge?

So was I. FWIW.

mm not nme.
mm not nme.
mm not nme.

the difference (circa 89/90/91/92/93/94/95)
was *cavernous*.

http://www.heavenly100.com/biogs/biog_sainte_1.html# if you don't believe *me*...

Tim F is OTM about 'Action' - there's a disco tune in there which needs to be let loose. Also the 'The More You Know' bassline is The Fall's 'How I Wrote Elastic MAn' recontextualised brilliantly.

Doubtless (keep in mind the latter half of the nineties is the time when I grew to hate St. Etienne; I kept pretending they had broken up after Tiger Bay for a long time).

This album is number 19432374564254 on the list of things I guess I really need to hear at some point from this year. But for now, the Iditarod. I'm starting to hate having to even pretend to keep up with things...

Sound of Water, for all its German electronic flourishes, sounded much more "English" to me than Finisterre does, but then my idea of England is probably way off base.

Re: sounding like themselves : hmmm - there are a couple of trax that I may not have guessed if I hadn't known. Some of the vocals seem deeper and less breathy, which I like.

Actually Keith I'd heard "album of the year" sentiments prior to obtaining the album. Albums can grow on people without being a result of distortive outside influence. In this case i think Finisterre takes a while (unless a return to So Tough is exactly what you're after) because, bereft of character-determinative arrangement flourishes that are consistent across the album, it is initially harder to tell what the album is doing that is different, intriguing.

My thoughts were pretty similar to yours on first listen, I posted differently on the third or fourth listen and differently again after the tenth. I respect that your opinions might not change, but I hardly think it's strange that mine and others' can.

'it has 80s top 40 production'

Is this supposed to be a criticism? ;-)

(anyway I think Keith is mistaken on that point - if anything Finisterre references the late seventies and the early nineties and skips the eighties altogether)

Oh dear, time to dig out the Santayana quote about repeating the mistakes of the past. ;-) I'll grant ya the guitar line on "Heart and Soul" though.

Can anyone confirm/refute this?