Saint Etienne - shower scene, 2002

"Saint Etienne have always believed in having an aesthetic. On their 1991 debut, Foxbase Alpha, the trio finessed 1960s pop, 1990s dance and an encyclopaedia's worth of cultural references into a celebratory vision of Englishness three years before Britpop. Though that vision later became blurred, their sixth album, titled after a recently renamed outpost of the shipping forecast, revisits Foxbase Alpha's terrain, a decade older, wiser and angrier. On the single, Action, singer Sarah Cracknell is once again the bored suburbanite looking for the in-crowd but this time she fears she may not find it. On the title track, Cosmetique's Sarah Churchill defiantly restates Saint Etienne's manifesto, from muso battleline-drawing ("Donovan over Dylan") to poignant urban utopianism ("this house believes in skyscrapers") while Cracknell breathes "tear it down and start again" like the world's most mild-mannered revolutionary. The familiar soft-focus genre-blending, now with added electro, is peppered with deadpan aphorisms from actor Michael Jayston; though hit-and-miss, they enhance the peculiarly English ambience. Finisterre is the work of a band who have remembered what they're here for."