Customer Reviews

Trip

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

 

 

Saint Etienne reveal their sixties pop roots by pulling out a mind-boggling collection of nearly 50 (generally) obscure pop records. Every bargain bin has been pillaged to come up with an onslaught of mainly psychedelic and pop records. If you liked ST. Etienne's cover of 'Who do you think you are?', then there are a bunch more like that. In fact there's just too much. If you listen to the whole of the first CD through at high volume without a break, your brain will explode. Groovy baby. The second CD is mellower and features the Godlike genius of Scott Walker.

This is a sensational compilation and, for my money, by far the strongest of the Trip series. I've always had a soft spot for St Etienne's mix of beats, melody and kitsch, and their influences are certainly evident here. CD1 is the more upbeat and cheesy set, the highlights being a gem from post-Ross Supremes (track 9), a bombastic 70s stomper (22) and a couple of Northern Soul interludes. But the more consistent delight is CD2 with at least 7 or 8 obscure golden nuggets. The collective strength stems from some awesome female vocal performances by, variously, Sandy Denny, Beverley Martin, Dusty Springfield and, in the set's climax, Julie Covington. Elsewhere there are sumptuous arrangements aplenty (tracks 1, 7, 14, 20), some delightful eccentricities, a great Scott Walker song and an orgasmic Richard Thompson blues guitar solo on track 9. It's all woven together with some inspired segues. This has become one of my favourite compilations of all time and I just never get tired of it. Wonderful.

Pop music aficionados in particular will find a wealth of undiscovered gems from the late 1960's and early 1970's in this brilliantly sequenced set. These aren't throwaway cuts - most of these tracks sound like big hits in some groovy alternate universe. An amazing time capsule sure to have your party guests asking "Where did you find this?".

Note: There seems to be some confusion regarding Saint Etienne's role on this collection. This is NOT a Saint Etienne album, nor is it supposed to be a substitute for an album of original work. The members play the role of curators for this remarkable volume of "The Trip", a series of collections created by various artists.

excellent mixtape from a non-excellent band
do not sleep on this mix if you do not like saint ettiene.
even though they are sickenly sweet pop music their infulences are quite impressive and compiled in this double cd mix
well mixed well chosen.

James, get over yourself!

I have zero desire to haul out a record player and scout around for gems. I just wanna invite all my hep cats around and have this playing nonchanlently in the background, making me instantly cool. lol

Hi.. this is Saint Etienne, we blew our wad and have kind of run out of things to do here in the studio....so, what we'd like to do now is see if we can interest you in purchasing this cd full of the songs that we have been trying to sound like anyway during our recording career. If you like us, you'll love this stuff we were ripping off in the first place. And remember that we are saving you the time of actually having to go out and discover these things for yourself and get your hands dirty in a dollar bin and own a record player...