Saint Etienne: Travel Edition: 1990-2005

By Nathan Rabin | December 6, 2004 | 6:00am

Music Reviews Music

Saint Etienne: Travel Edition: 1990-2005

It seems more than a little ironic that Saint Etienne would hook up with Sub Pop, and the house that Kurt Cobain's angst built would end up distributing the antithesis of grunge. Saint Etienne's cosmopolitan, urbane dance music represents a dream of European hyper-sophistication where the men all look like Jean-Paul Belmondo, the women all look like Brigitte Bardot, and everyone drives the latest sports car as they embark on ill-conceived love affairs. As the Saint Etienne best-of Travel Edition: 1990-2005 reveals, at its best, Saint Etienne turned lifestyle porn into impossibly perfect pop singles, imbuing disco-ready synth-pop melodies with infinite shades of melancholy and heartbreak on early tracks like "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "Like A Motorway."

Saint Etienne could long be counted on to deliver shimmering, evocative little slices of pop perfection, but after the group peaked with 1998's Good Humor—which segued dizzily into lush retro-pop and Motown soul—its melodies grew less indelible and the pretensions and ambitions became more pronounced on tracks like the nearly nine-minute-long suite "How We Used To Live." The downward trajectory suggests Saint Etienne's best days may be behind it, but Travel Edition should nonetheless appeal to the cocktail-sipping, Oscar-Wilde-quoting arch-sophisticate lurking within everyone.