Customer Reviews

Foxbase Alpha

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is what started it all. From album to album, the trio of Saint Etienne change musically like a chameleon changes its colors - and each change can be appreciated in a different way. There's something special about Foxbase Alpha, though. Sure it's a little rough around the edges (not having the help of the mixers from albums like Tiger Bay and Continental), but this album has a warmth all its own - a sort of timelessness, if you will. Some of the songs on the album are achievements that the Etienne have yet to top. 'Nothing Can Stop Us' is an amazing song, and it WILL put you in a good mood, no question. 'London Belongs To Me' washes you away in a dreamy sea of gentle vocals and synths. And of course, there's 'Spring', an utterly charming and innocent number. Those are my favorites, but I haven't even mentioned their outstanding covers - 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by Neil Young, 'Kiss And Make Up' by the Field Mice... I could go on and on.

I love all of Saint Etienne's albums, and I appreciate each of them for what they are - it takes guts to make a pop record one year and a techno one the next, at the risk of seriously alienating some fans. Foxbase Alpha, though, is on a pedestal in my heart. Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs, and Sarah Cracknell may have gone on from here to explore newer, stranger, and wilder sonic frontiers, but this, their first foray into music, is simply magical.

Thanks.

Now that the 90's have come to a close, this album still stands as one of my Top 25 albums of the decade. This debut album is a brilliant, quirky blend of dance and techno sensibility combined with 60's retro pop melodies with lots of odd noodlings and samplings thrown in between. Saint Etienne still haven't bettered this album to date. Sarah Cracknell's like-honey vocals are sensuous and sincere, harkening back to the such 60's songstresses like Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and Diana Ross. Instrumentalists Stanley and Wiggs' clever and masterful arrangements prove that they are electronica innovators in their own right. Listen for the odd vignettes "Etienne Gonna Die" (composed entirely of a snippet of dialogue from the film "House of Games" backed by menacing tribal-jungle percussion) and the psychotic "Wilson".

Standouts are "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (a classy club rendition of Neil Young's song), "Spring" , She's the One", "People Get Real" (my all-time favorite Etienne song), "Stoned to Say the Least" (ambient-dance bliss), "Nothing Can Stop Us" and "Kiss and Make Up".

If you own the original copy of this CD already as I do, you'll hear the album greatly improved by the remastering. The extra tracks are good, nothing that will change your life, but a nice little bonus. Wait for the price to drop below $20 though. It's a bit expensive for an album that's been around for so long.

Saint Etienne's debut is brilliant. The music, is mainly a blend of house, hop-hop and classic 60's pop, but many other styles are added to the mix. The vocals (in almost all of the songs, by Sarah Cracknell) are breezy and sensual. Songs like "Spring", "Nothing Can Stop Us" or "She's the One" are catchy, beautifully constructed pop gems. But this album's strongest point is definitely its power to congure up images of places and times, lost sceneries we'd wish (or dream) to be part of. Some tracks, like Wilson or Etienne Gonna die (as well as other non-proper songs consisting mostly of spoken samples) may become a little tedious and feel too long, but serve to the purpose of leaving the listener in a confused, unattentive state to be pleasantly broken by another lovely song. I definitely recommend this album and rate it among the top five of the 90's.

This has to go down in pop music history as one of the best debut albums ever. 5 stars for the album, but thumbs down for the price. Why so expensive?!?! I've been ordering my British stuff from Amazon.UK because it's usually cheaper and it's just kinda' cool to get it from England. In fact, for a solid $20, you can get this from the UK.

I was beginning to lose hope that there were any artists left out there who could inspire in me a manic fever to hear every single note they have ever produced. And then there was Saint Etienne!

I became an Etienne fan in a very roundabout way. I happened to buy a copy of Sarah's solo EP, Kelly's Locker. I loved it on first listen. I found her full length album and loved that, too. But where could I go from there? According to Amazon.com, Saint Etienne was the answer!

After buying every Etienne CD I could get my hands on, I sat back and only listened to them casually for awhile. I was a little overwhelmed, as I had just purchased 5 CDs from them and didn't quite know where to start. Well, I ended up starting with Smash the System, which showed me that I needed to catch up on early Etienne! (All the CDs I'd bought were Good Humor and later) I got Foxbase Alpha on Ebay and I love it. There's nothing quite like listening to the early beginnings of a great band and seeing how they got where they are today.

This album isn't their best, but it is a great start. Their cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" will not allow you to sit still (and I admit that at first I was puzzled as to why Sarah's voice sounded so different; should have figured the answer was as simple as a different singer!). I loved this song before I got this album, but now it just doesn't sound right to me unless it is preceded by "This is Radio Etienne". "Carn't Sleep" and "Spring" are both glorious pop songs with two very different moods: one is about missing a lost love, one is very hopefull that love will find its way to her. "Girl VII" has an incredible guitar sound. "She's the One" is a trippy little song that turns the title into an accusation. "Stoned to Say the Least" and "Like the Swallow" are both sonic onslaughts and "London Belongs to Me" is nestled sweetly in between.

Obviously they had a lot to learn yet about making an album. For example, I don't think they would include such an acid trip like "Wilson" on any of their albums today. I'm sure they had fun making it, but this sort of thing usually turns out to be much more amusing for the people involved, and not so much for the outsider listening in. I'm sure they also wouldn't include a sound clip from a movie that goes on for several minutes. Taking an entire chunk of dialogue from a movie and putting it to a drumbeat isn't really all that much fun to listen to (though I will say that the movie sounded like something I might want to watch!) But these complaints are very minor and the band completely made up for them by including "Nothing Can Stop Us" to the album. It has a 60's feel to it while sounding totally original and fresh.

Saint Etienne has usurped Abba's spot as my all-time favorite band. If you are a fan of dance-pop, electronica, 60's kitsch, or just about every other style you can think of (except perhaps death metal!) then please listen to this group! It may change your life! (Though I can't make any promises, so if your life doesn't change, please keep in mind that I don't actually know you, and if I did, I might not have said that)

I bought this when it first came out and 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' was a hit on the top 40 radio station in Vancouver. I didn't really like the song, but I thought I'd look at the cd anyway. The cover of the cd seemed really strange, it didn't seem to match the single, which I thought was kind of a novelty throwaway dance-pop song. It's officially one of the greatest album covers of all time and has liner notes by Jon Savage. It captures perfectly the new optimistic and lovely semantics that indie bands post acid-house were creating in the early nineties, but don't let that put you off - it's classic. Some of the songs are like musical prozac, capturing a fantastic mood of being young, in love, in the spring when everything's blooming, you have the whole day to wander aimlessly through the urban streets and city parks and do whatever you please and look for adventure and fun experiences and stuff. Some of the tracks are just brief atmospheric samples thrown together, but are inexplicably funny and clever. 'Spring', 'People Get Real', 'Stoned to Say the Least', 'Nothing Can Stop Us Now' are some of the best tracks I've ever heard in my life, no kidding. The lyrics are always arbitrary and vague, so you never know what they're about but they just seem 'right'. Like a less macho and psychotic sounding New Order trying to make hip-hop with a 60's girl-group singer. (Sarah Cracknell - what a charmer!)

Basically, I know I'm not going to convince anyone to buy this that isn't already a Saint Etienne fan already, but it's a crime that they are so underrated (the English music press seem to detest them - God knows why. But who cares, they hate everyone.) I think one of the reasons is their music has an absolutely zero testosterone quotient - be warned.

Most people never picked up on this band until 'Good Humor' and to be honest I don't think they have the same magic touch that they had on their first two albums, although I still think they're great. But 'Foxbase Alpha' and 'So Tough' are two truly magical albums, 2 of my all time faves, even after almost a decade. So please, if you're looking for something special, intelligent, sincere, adventurous, emotional, escapist, melodic, beautiful, whimsical (things that are completely lacking in current pop music, it must be said) then you will find all of these things in 'Foxbase Alpha' and 'So tough'. And if these don't work for you then perhaps madame would care to try anything from 'Tiger Bay' on. Different, but the same.

One of the frustrating things about being a fan of this band is that they get virtually zero airplay. Too pop and carefree for the angst of modern rock and college radio, too odd and puzzling for everything else. And now that Warner Bros. has had to drop them due to their corporate-mega-commercial facelift and they've been slumming in the sub pop/mantra/beggers banquet ghetto, greater commercial success seems unlikely, but not impossible. Wait and see with their next album.

So buy it already!!!

I was a bit skeptical at first about buying this, I did not think that the album was old enough yet to warrant a re-issue. But, "Foxbase Alpha" in 2009 sounds just as fresh and nostalgic now, as it did then. The sound is much more crisp and clear and there are some much needed tinkerings with volume (the album no longer sounds like its in mono, as I always felt the original edition did). I could not be happier with the reissue of this. It brings me back to high school when I would play this all day long. My only negative comment about this, and all the SE reissues, is that the 2nd disc of b-sides and rarities is not explained well enough, if at all. But beyond that, its worth the rather hefty price tag, even if you have never bought it before.

I've mostly listened to "So Tough" back in 94 and this is excellent early electro pop music and I still like it a lot. I also listen to Heavy metal like Pantera or Death, R&B and Gansta rap. Conclusion : Just because you listen to death metal doesn't mean you won't like Saint-Etienne.

Voulf

Fifteen years on, St Etienne are still an underestimated force, despite, or perhaps because of, their consistent chart appearances. Of course Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell are not only about commercial songs, but have constantly looked forwards and backwards in their music, one minute constructing mix albums of records to be found on the jukeboxes of sixties' greasy spoons, the next collaborating with To Rococo Rot or handing over their multi-tracks to the most avant remixers of the day.
Foxbase Alpha, their highly regarded 1991 debut, set a pattern, juxtaposing eclectic samples between songs that might be poppy, wistful, surreal or kitsch. They also used the CD booklet in a different and new way, here with an essay on London by Jon Savage and some iconic photographs.
In the early days, they lacked a regular singer and on their debut single as St Etienne in 1990 (included here) they borrowed the singer Moira Lambert (from Faith Over Reason) for their transformation of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a regular radio play to this day, and on its follow up, the non-album Let's Kiss And Make Up (originally by the Field Mice) enlisted Donna Savage from Dead Famous People. Once Sarah Cracknell appeared, however, they had found their perfect foil with her summery and evocative lightness of tone. She first appeared on the suitably titled single Nothing Can Stop Us Now, a minor hit in May 1991 that paved the way for this deceptively influential album a few months later, which is still such a joy to listen to