Track Listing

1. This Is Radio Etienne
2. Only Love Can Break Your Heart
3. Wilson
4. Can't Sleep
5. Girl VII
6. Spring
7. She's The One
8. Stoned To Say The Least
9. Nothing Can Stop Us Now
10. Etienne Gonna Die
11. London Belongs To Me
12. Like A Swallow
13. Dilworth's Theme

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91069 in Music
• Released on: 2001-12-17
• Number of discs: 1

CD Description
Saint Etienne's kaleidoscopic 1991 debut, FOXBASE ALPHA, isone of the most influential albums in '90s dance music. While the rest of the U.K. was mired in a post-acid house Ecstasy hangover, the Northeast London trio of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, and Pete Wiggs married club rhythms to classic pop forms. The album's first two singles were covers of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "Kiss and Make Up" by Sarah Records mainstays the Field Mice. Elsewhere, the album features esoteric sample loops like "Wilson", featuring samples from an old record about British currency decimalization, and "Etienne Gonna Die". There are also killer popsongs like the pounding "She's the One" and the lovely "Carnt Sleep". Cracknell's classic pop voice recalls Petula Clark, and Stanley and Wiggs are inventive arranger-producers. FOXBASE ALPHA is a dance-pop classic.

Customer Reviews

Instant classic and still a treasure !
Released in 1991 this highly rated album launched trio St.Etienne from dancefloor obscurity to a certain amount of acclaim and instant fame. Having a minor hit in the Neil Young cover "Only love can break your heart", pop perfectionists St.Etienne put togehter a catchy and dance oriented piece of music easy to fall in love with, or even falling in love with. Up to this day, 11 years gone by and among my over 1000 albums, Foxbase Alpha still is a treasure and standout album and includes several of my dearest moments in life. Highly recommended.

Classy debut
Fifteen years on, St Etienne are still an underestimated force, despite, or perhaps because of, their consistent chart appearances. Of course Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell are not only about commercial songs, but have constantly looked forwards and backwards in their music, one minute constructing mix albums of records to be found on the jukeboxes of sixties' greasy spoons, the next collaborating with To Rococo Rot or handing over their multi-tracks to the most avant remixers of the day.
Foxbase Alpha, their highly regarded 1991 debut, set a pattern, juxtaposing eclectic samples between songs that might be poppy, wistful, surreal or kitsch. They also used the CD booklet in a different and new way, here with an essay on London by Jon Savage and some iconic photographs.
In the early days, they lacked a regular singer and on their debut single as St Etienne in 1990 (included here) they borrowed the singer Moira Lambert (from Faith Over Reason) for their transformation of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a regular radio play to this day, and on its follow up, the non-album Let's Kiss And Make Up (originally by the Field Mice) enlisted Donna Savage from Dead Famous People. Once Sarah Cracknell appeared, however, they had found their perfect foil with her summery and evocative lightness of tone. She first appeared on the suitably titled single Nothing Can Stop Us Now, a minor hit in May 1991 that paved the way for this deceptively influential album a few months later, which is still such a joy to listen to

Impressive Debut
I found that this record not only promised great things for the furture but also delivered the goods itself. Fox Base Alpha grabs you right from the off (well, after the radio sample)with an inventive cover of Neil Young's classic 'Only Love can break your heart'.

Though perhaps the dullest moment of the the album is the pointless song 'Wilson'. Though after this you don't look back. The next few songs 'Carnt sleep' , 'Girl VII', 'Spring' and 'She's the one' are as good as anything I have heard from a UK Independent group.

Especially 'Spring', I think Sarah Cracknell is the only person I have heard sing who can pull off the mid song breathy dialogue. Infact she sounds really classy.

After these there is a momentary lull in 'Stoned to say the least' where there is a soundbite from countdown's Richard Whitely (this is perhaps the only context in which he is ever funny).

From then on Nothing can stop us now takes the album to unforseen hights untill it ends on 'Dilworth's theme'. This album must be bought, it proves what an important group St Ettienne have become over the last decade