Saint Etienne: Places To Visit

Last year's Good Humour was a breakthrough of sorts for Saint Etienne: A smart, winning, pure pop album, it's the British group's finest work to date. Saint Etienne's previous albums usually buried three or four great songs amid track after track of unnecessary instrumentals, sound fragments, sterile disco beats, and experimental weirdness, but Good Humour showcased a warmer, more consistent, more song-oriented band. But if that album was Saint Etienne without the irritating filler, the band's new six-track EP, Places To Visit, is Saint Etienne minus the memorable songs. Apparently designed to please fans enamored of the group's noodly, studio-geek side, Places To Visit features yet another pleasant but unremarkable instrumental ("Artieripp") and not one but two songs built around little more than a minimalist electro-beat and Sarah Cracknell's breathy cooing. Even the most interesting tracks, the ode to submission "52 Pilot" (co-produced by The High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan) and the chilly, old-school-disco semi-anthem "We're In The City," feel less like fully fleshed-out songs than rough drafts abandoned early on. Saint Etienne cultists should enjoy Places To Visit, but it's inessential for everyone else.