Bob Stanley, left, Sarah Cracknell and Pete Wiggs combine sunny, Sixties-tinged pop with new-town dreaming
★★★★☆
An album about life in the home counties doesn’t sound like the most appealing idea, Sunday roasts and mock-Tudor semis not having the same romance as, say, juke joints and shotgun shacks. However, the London band Saint Etienne always had sympathy for suburbia and combining sunny, Sixties-tinged pop with new-town dreaming has an unassuming appeal. Whyteleafe imagines David Bowie as an office worker, thinking of “the Paris of the Sixties, the Berlin of the Seventies” while stuck on a rail replacement bus service in Crawley. Heather tells of the Enfield poltergeist, which tormented two girls in a council house between 1977 and 1979. The singer Sarah Cracknell’s breathy tones keep it light and St Etienne’s way with a breezy melody makes the album zip by pleasantly. (Heavenly)
June 2 2017
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