Saint Etienne - Foxbase Alpha (1991)

I own this album mostly by mistake. I think I mistook Saint Etienne for another band with a similar name. I can't really think of which one at the moment. In any case, when I bought this used CD in record shop in London, I wasn't expecting the kind of music I got. I was expecting 90s britpop style music, but Saint Etienne is much closer to the kind of pop music I would've despised back in the 90s. Nowadays, I'm much more open to different musical styles, but I still can't say this is the kind of music I often listen to. There are traces of trip hop and dance music in Saint Etienne's sound. I generally do generally like trip hop, but mainly a bit more melancholic approach. The album has its moments, mostly in places where it draws influences from 60s pop music, but I wouldn't necessarily have bought the album, had I known what I was in store for. As always though, I'm glad to own music from different genres.

Foxbase Alpha was nominated for a Mercury Prize and I can see why it would've been popular at the time of its release. There are clear influences from the club culture of the 80s, especially Madchester movement. Also, the sound of the album must've been quite unique at the time of its release when trip hop hadn't properly been introduced yet. I'm sure bands like Happy Mondays have had a much bigger influence on this album than the early trip hop albums like Blue Lines by Massive Attack.

The album opens with a French-language announcement, This Is Radio Etienne that sounds like a start of a tv show from the 1960s with many mentions of football. This leads directly to the song Only Love Can Break Your Heart, A Neil Young cover that's been changed to almost unrecognisable by the change of timing and many major chords have been changed to minor chords. Wilson uses studio techniques that later became something of a trademark of trip hop: scratching of the needle on a vinyl album and repeated spoken word sentences that sound like they're from a tv-show. Carnt Sleep brings out the clear vocals that I kind of like in Saint Etienne's music. The echoey guitars seem to almost predict the band The XX a couple of decades later. Girl VII has drum machine sounds and synth bass sequences that really remind me of Happy Mondays and the whole British club culture of the 80s. Nevertheless, I do really like the acoustic guitar sequences and etheric vocals. Spring is drawing influences from 70s soul music and this sound seems to predict sounds that became really popular later in the 90s along with popular R&B movement. She's the One even has some rap-style sequences along with electronic drums. Stoned to Say the Least is one of the most interesting songs on the album. There are clear influences from house music and the long hypnotic rhythm sequences are quite engaging. Nothing Can Stop Us goes back to more soulful style with already familiar announcement style speech sequences. The whispered vocals are nice and seductive. Etienne Gonna Die is a strange song of clanking sounds and talk. London Belongs to Me takes a bit warmer sound with extremely echoey backing vocals filling the air later on. This sounds like a proper summer song. Like the Swallow is probably the strangest song on the album. It uses dreamy synth backgrounds that became popular later in the 90s. The album ends with the short Dilworth's Dream, which in its raw style, is very different from the rest of the album.

The album has been constructed as a sort of radio show with different types of programmes. This style has been used numerous times on pop music albums, but I don't know if it had been used many times before this album, so this might have been a groundbreaking thing back in '91. 

The music video for Only Love Can Break Your Heart has many of the 90s music video clichés.  It's half black and white, it has many sequences with fast forward style and it uses psychedelic colour features over performance by the band. The video has been filmed in Hampstead Heath in London which you can see at least from the football sequences in front of the Hampstead lido.

As I said in the beginning, I wouldn't have necessarily bought this album, had I known exactly what it was like, but sometimes these mistakes are good, because it takes me out of my comfort zone and encourages me to listen to music that gives me a new perspective on things. Now that I listened to the album through I did quite like it.

Listen to the album on Spotify.