Words & Music by Saint Etienne
- Saint Etienne
- Band Name: Saint Etienne
- Record Label: Universal
- Release Date: May 29, 2012
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
May 25, 2012100Words and Music, the first full studio album in an aeon from Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, is a masterclass of pop theory and practice in perfect harmony.
-
Jul 17, 201291Her male partners Bob Stanley and Peter Wiggs provide reliable disco-inflected pop or vice versa that the remixers on the optional bonus disc trick up with more wit and fidelity than we who avoid remixes sagely expect.
-
Oct 12, 201280They have made an amazing album about how amazing pop music can be. [Jul 2012, p.106]
-
Jun 7, 201280It has the vitality of today's top 40 dance-pop but is full of the kind of wisdom, wit and warmth that can only come with age.
-
Jun 5, 201280This deft new album [is] a delight.
-
Jun 4, 201280When it gets it right, it gets it absolutely spot on, but a little more variation wouldn't go amiss. However, the album's highlights – and there are many – are just so fantastic that you can forgive it an awful lot.
-
Jun 4, 201280The dizzying succession of beats per minute paired with thoughtful lyrics about music's role in shaping memories gives Saint Etienne a chance to create a rare entity: Dance music for the thinking person.
-
Jun 1, 201280This is easily Saint Etienne's best album since 1998's Good Humor.
-
May 29, 201280Words & Music turns out to be one of the band's most enriching albums, both musically and emotionally.
-
May 29, 201280Words and Music further demonstrates this while helping us realize just how lucky we are to still have them around.
-
May 25, 201280What makes Words and Music stand out is that it's both polished and personal, a prime example of how a big pop sound can reach out and connect in the most intimate ways.
-
May 22, 201280Words And Music By Saint Etienne is an album that reaffirms all that is glorious and brilliant about pop music.
-
May 21, 201280While Saint Etienne will always sound like Saint Etienne, these songs are their sharpest in over a decade.
-
May 21, 201280There is perhaps no band with a greater appreciation of the sheer joy and thrill of pop music in its purest form than Saint Etienne. 'Words And Music By Saint Etienne' is not only their own unique take on what pop means to them it is also an incredibly fine album.
-
May 14, 201280This is a beautifully executed love letter to the eternal pop rush. [Jun 2012, p.82]
-
May 14, 201280Wonderful stuff.
-
May 14, 201280Words and Music frequently sounds as dizzy with the joy of pop as Saint Etienne did 20 years ago.
-
May 14, 201280Words And Music isn't just a celebration of popular music, but a hymnal ode to a loss of innocence, an end to the passions of our childhood.
-
May 24, 201278Saint Etienne's best LP since 1994 masterpiece Tiger Bay.
-
May 24, 201275Words And Music expertly explores the intoxicated love of music and the sheer joy of being a music fan: feelings so universal that they will never be confined to particular eras.
-
Jul 19, 201260Words and Music amounts to little more than an attempt to scale the same heights; sweet vocals, minimalist keys with the odd guitar thrown in.
-
Jul 18, 201260A gloriously unviable alternative to dullard R&B/X Factorism. [Jun 2012, p.92]
-
May 22, 201260The only maturity in their sound is towards a more ambient quarter. Elevator music not quite, but rising out of the background might be an issue.
-
May 30, 201220Words and Music by St Etienne really brings it on itself, and the result is totally vapid.