SAINT ETIENNE - HOME COUNTIES

It’s been five years since Saint Etienne released Words and Music, their love letter to the emotional power of music. And now they return with a journey through the counties they grew up in.

This is a day trip of places where people build domestic lives, teenagers get bored and dreamers plan to escape.

Saint Etienne have always spanned many musical genres and this album is no exception - in that sense it is the quintessential Saint Etienne album.

The 70s disco samba of Dive will have you twirling around a ballroom that has seen better days, while Take It All In is a mellow late 60s shuffle.

Underneath The Apple Tree is a Motown stomp, while the electro-pop of Out Of My Mind wouldn’t sound out of place on a Kylie album.

There are standout songs, but this album works best listened to in its entirety.

And while a lot of it is nostalgic, it sums up the love/hate relationship we can have with the places we came from.

ALT-J - RELAXER

Three years after their sophomore record, the English group, featuring Gwil Sainsbury, on guitar/bass, Joe Newman, guitar/lead vocals, Gus Unger-Hamilton, keyboards/vocals and drummerThom Sonny Green return with the focused and concise Relaxer.

Joined again in the studio by producer Charlie Andrew, this is an album which refuses to sit still from the moment opening track 3WW, which features Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, delicately clicks in.

More folky than its predecessor, The London Metropolitan Orchestra feature on six of the eight tracks - most impressively on the epic hymnal Pleader, which takes lyrical cues from Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley.

A cover of House Of The Rising Sun (think more Woody Guthrie than The Animals) is an interesting experiment but the obvious stand out is punchy Hit Me Like Your Snare with its heavy distort and surprising nasal punk warble emerging from Joe Newman’s throat.

Marika Hackman is back to lend her voice to the whispering Last Year on a record which shows obvious progression from the former Mercury Prize-winners.

by PA Reviewers

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