ANGELS
Auf der Maur
Belinda Carlisle
Sarah Cracknell
Juliana Hatfield
Helen Love
Cerys Matthews
Idha Ovelius
Liz Phair
Suzanne Vega

ARCHANGELS
The Breeders
Curve
The Donnas
The Field Mice
Lush

LISTS
Favourite People
Screen Favourites
Gigs and Festivals
Guilty Pleasures
Top 25 Albums
Top 25 Songs
Yearly Music Lists

AMIGA
My Amiga History
My Compositions
System Snapshots

My love of Sarah and Saint Etienne can be blamed on one person...  My university house-mate Paul introduced me to the pleasures of Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha album way back in 1991, to which I then fell in love with both the band and Sarah.

Saint Etienne are essentially a pop group, although that description is doing them a huge disservice... The music they make is just so wide ranging and diverse.  They can (and have) made very successful chart pop songs, but they also make sublime, genre-defying music that just pulls at your heart.  As a band, Saint Etienne consist of three people.  Sarah, the multi-talented vocalist, and Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley who both contribute everything else music-wise.

They are a group who have been together for an incredibly long time.  They have occasionally contributed on separate music projects (notably Sarah, who recorded her hugely underrated solo album in 1997), but they have always remained a very tight-knit group.

The band have released countless numbers of albums.  Well, ok, that's a slight exaggeration - but it is hard to get a definitive number, because it depends on whether you count import only releases, fan club only releases, and so forth.  In the UK, at least, they have released seven studio, three compilation and one remix album.  Additionally, they have released some of their best work which has only ever been available via import (one of these, an import from Japan is an album called The Misadventures Of Saint Etienne, which particularly worth mentioning).

The music they make means so much to me for two reasons.  Firstly, the song writing is of such a high standard, that even Saint Etienne's instrumentals are among the most perfect music moments.  And secondly, this mixed with Sarah's awe-inspiring vocals are enough to melt even the most hardened cynic.  Their pop music moments are also some of the most perfect pop songs ever written.  You're In A Bad Way, Who Do You Think You Are, He's On The Phone and the greatest Christmas song ever written - I Was Born On Christmas Day, made pop music credible.  One of their songs, Hobart Paving, is a tear inducing ballad that also happens to be one of my favourite songs of all time, by any artist.  However, even their non commercial tracks are amazing.  Take Like The Swallow, this is an incredibly hypnotic song that tries to suck you into a deep vortex.  Or tracks like Former Lover, Like A Motorway or How We Used To Live.

Visit Saint Etienne's official website to keep up to date with all the latest information at  http://www.saintetienne.com

Sarah Cracknell Lipslide Sarah's album, released in 1997 is such a phenomenally underrated album.  In many ways, it sounds like the perfect pure pop album that Sarah probably always wanted to make - away from the main song writing duo of Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley.  It's very much an up-tempo album - and thankfully Lipslide never falls into the trap where so many artists go solo, and they release an album so plain and unexciting, where every song sounds the same as the next.

Below are various images of Sarah Cracknell and Saint Etienne from various magazines.
Click on any of the images to download a larger version of the picture.

	NME Published sometime in 1994, here is a Saint Etienne discography printed in the NME.
	Smash Hits The only Smash Hits related item for Saint Etienne is this rather Tape Stars item... where the idea of the pull out was to use the poster as a cassette tape cover!

Select Magazine These images are all taken from the now sadly defunct Select Magazine.  All of these are great images, ranging from the classy and sexy to the incredibly bizarre!

Raw Magazine Raw magazine was essentially a weekly 'tabloid' version of the great Select Magazine.  It didn't last very long, but this issue did feature a Sarah Cracknell 'Questions And Answers' interview, and this great picture!