Sound of Water

Rating

Album: Sound of Water
#	Song Title		Time
	Disc 1
1)	Late Morning	More Info...	0:04
2)	Heart Failed (In the Back of a Taxi)	More Info...	0:03
3)	Sycamore	More Info...	0:03
4)	Don't Back Down	More Info...	0:05
5)	Just a Little Overcome	More Info...	0:03
6)	Boy Is Crying	More Info...	0:04
7)	Aspects of Lambert	More Info...	0:03
8)	Downey CA	More Info...	0:04
9)	How We Used to Live	More Info...	0:09
10)	The Place at Dawn	More Info...	0:01

Performer Notes

Saint Etienne: Sarah Cracknell (vocals); Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs.
Additional personnel includes: Nathan Bennett (vocals); Siel Cruise (guitar, accordion, vibraphone, bass, drums); Jez Williams (guitar); David Lawes (recorder); Stefan Schneider (piano, Wurlitzer piano); Edgar Jones (upright & electric bass); John Miller (drums); Stuart Reid (percussion); Jomox (programming); Mitch Stevens, Charlotte Hodson (background vocals); To Rococo Rot, Sean O'Hagan.
Recorded at Amber Studios, Berlin, Germany. Includes liner notes by Simon Reynolds.
Lower-key than 1998's GOOD HUMOUR, with none of the quirky oddities of 1999's THE MISADVENTURES OF SAINT ETIENNE, SOUND OF WATER is instead a somber meditation, the kind which sounds best on days when nothing about your life seems wrong, but nothing seems quite right either. That said, the album is perhaps the band's most consistently compelling record since SO TOUGH.
Standouts include "Heart Failed," a pulsing, creepy number featuring sawing strings and bubbling synthesizers, "Sycamore," highlighting Sarah Cracknell's seductive, breathy vocals over piano, flute, and quietly twittering percussion, and the beautiful "Downey, CA," which continues the band's penchant for American cultural references. The record also features three instrumentals, "Late Morning," "Aspects of Lambert," and "Place at Dawn," all of which convey the vivid, widescreen cinematic imagery that has always been St. Etienne's most effective tool.

Professional Reviews

Spin (9/00, p.192) - 8 out of 10 - "...Tupperware-tight. Every twinkling ambient moment is remarkably humane....[They] are rocket deep in pop's starry skies..."

Entertainment Weekly (6/9/00, p.78) - "...Moody futurism....a dreamy set suffused with synth bleeps and strings, nodding to Eno, ABBA, and UK electro-soul peers Everything But The Girl..." - Rating: A-

Q (7/00, pp.123-4) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A quietly adventurous coming of age, as languorous and fuzzy around the edges as a summer afternoon."

Magnet (8-9/00, p.90) - "...Easily one of the year's standout albums."

CMJ (6/5/00, p.25) - "...They harness [their] alternate-history swinging-60s London pop with 90s electronic space explorations....Floating-on-a-cloud cosmic pop aesthetics..."

Mojo (Publisher) (6/00, pp.96-7) - "...There's a warm heart beating under all this newly-assembled machinery....[It's] that rare beast - an album both Ralf Hutter [Kraftwerk] and Pete Waterman [mass-market pop afficianado] could love."

NME (Magazine) (5/20/00, p.43) - 7 out of 10 - "...[This album] comes with such an earnest passion for the timeless pop form that any snobbery is punctured with an arrow...from Cupid..."

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