Audio CD review:
Saint Etienne - Smash the System: Singles and More

Saint Etienne - Smash the System: Singles and More

Band: Saint Etienne Title: Smash the System: Singles and More Rating: Release Date: 24 September, 2001 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Only Love Can Break Your Heart 2: Kiss and Make Up 3: Nothing Can Stop Us 4: Spring 5: Carnt Sleep 6: Filthy 7: Join Our Club 8: People Get Real 9: Paper 10: Avenue 11: Mario's Cafe 12: You're in a Bad Way 13: Archway People 14: Who Do You Think You Are 15: Hobart Paving 16: Pale Movie 17: Hug My Soul 18: Like a Motorway 19: Cool Kids of Death 20: Process 21: He's on the Phone 22: Angel 23: Burnt Out Car 24: Shad Thames 25: Wood Cabin 26: Sylvie 27: Lose That Girl 28: Bad Photographer 29: Goodnight Jack 30: Madeleine 31: 4.35 in the Morning 32: Jack Lemmon 33: Saturday 34: 52 Pilot

Customer Reviews I Love This Band!! Sarah Cracknell was my first (and only) teenage crush after seeing her perform on Top of the Pops around Christmas time 1993. I've been a fan of Saint Etienne since the age of 14 - over 12 years now. Not only did I find her amazingly attractive, she also had a great voice. That was the first time I had heard of the band and I have collected a lot of their stuff since then. This compilation is missing a few great tunes which have been replaced with other great tunes. Listening to Sarah singing Hobart Paving and Mario's cafe in her unique way is a treat. Hers is the only voice in pop that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Along with Pulp and the Arctic Monkeys, Saint Etienne have encapsulated English life in a way that few others have managed. Bob and Pete's clever production is superbly balanced by Sarah's gorgeous vocals. Top-quality music always stands the test of time and Saint Etienne's longevity is testament to this. This album covers their music up to 1999 and they have continued to craft superb music since then. . Great SE collection for beginners, good addition for fans It's less of an attempt at a definitive collection, ala the more recent anthology _Travel Edition_, and more of a nicely eclectic sampling of the group's prodigious output. _Smash the System_ is great collection of earlier (pre-_Sound of Water_ as far as I can tell) Saint Etienne. If you've heard some SE that you have, of course, loved and want to get a sense of their wider catalog, this a good place to start. The two disks also serve as great party disks or fodder for brilliant pop mixes in their own right. It also shows that SE are no one consistant thing/genre except great pop music. Sometimes they are more dancey, sometimes more trip-hop, at others neo-classical Phil Spectorish pop. It's the sort of group that can make you think of Massive Attack, Sterolab, B. A. D. , and Papas Fritas at the same time, while still being their own wonderfully incomparable thing. It's hard to judge the title phrase "singles and more" as, at least according to the liner notes, all of the songs were previously albumn tracks, though at least some of these albumns were Japan only releases and almost all of them are a challenge to find in the U. S. (I suspect there's some story here about SE having had bad early experiences with U. S. distributors. _So Tough_ came out on WB but more recent releases have been on Subpop. Maybe it has something to do with that shampoo comercial. ) So far as I can tell, many of the singles are not appreciably different from the albumn tracks that I already had from _So Tough_ and _Good Humour_. Still, these are fabulous songs. I had lost my copy of _Fox Base Alpha_ and so was greatful to have those great indie-pop classics back, and my girlfriend especially liked the section of dance-mix tracks that we hadn't heard before. SE fans (at least those who are willing to shell out for the imports) may not be especially well served by this collection, as they will have many of the tracks already. Still, it's not a bad price for a two-disk set, especially as an import. So, if you want to widen your exposure to SE or introduce someone else to them, this is a fine way to do it. a purchase to ponder there's only one bad thing about compilation albums and it's that they seem to miss the flow that you'd get on a regularly produced project. it seems as if i've made it my mission in life to accumulate as much saint etienne stuff as i can so i recently purchased this album. this holds true for the first disc even though it contains a few of my favs from the saints; with that said, it is a great introduction to their sound though. the second disc however, is a gem seeing as how it has that flow that the first one misses, a rarity indeed. . . any saint fan would love it i think. . You can see a complete list of all Saint Etienne discography, or go back to the Saint Etienne tabs