Tales From Turnpike House

Another deliberately and charmingly quaint record from the London trio. Here they've slipped completely from thrift-store collage into the strictly upscale, the joins have vanished from the music, and they've boiled all of their impulses into one smooth, seamless thing.

Saint Etienne is something like the musical equivalent of a Hugh Grant romantic comedy—sophisticated, extremely English, somewhat yuppified and materialistic, and with a predilection for prettiness that at times seems like a stronger driving force than substance. But at its best, it's the pinnacle of breezy pop. The…

Tales from Turnpike House is a modest triumpth.

The late 1990s found Saint Etienne desperate to escape from a world of their own making.

<p>(Sanctuary)</p>