I wasn’t much into Saint Etienne before about 1998. I hadn’t yet developed a taste for treacly pop or learned how to forgive bluntly shallow lyrics, and the songs I’d heard of theirs like “He’s On The Phone” were more pop than I could take at the time.

I can’t remember why I gave their 1998 album Good Humor a chance (likely because of that that constant paranoia of the music geek that you’re missing out on something good), but it completely turned around my opinion of Saint Etienne. My warming to them is probably in no small part due to the warm production of Tore Johansson, bringing in horns, electric piano and crisp drums that result in one of the coziest pop albums ever made.

Saint Etienne, “Woodcabin”
get it on Good Humor

The best example of this is the opener to Good Humor, “Woodcabin”, a track that seems titled for where it would sound best, but it still seems like an early morning comedown track. The jittery funk drum breaks place it clearly in the 90s, but there’s plenty of 70s songwriter in there. It’s clearly lounge pop, but that label suggests that it’s boring, where it’s anything but.

Mostly, though: Good Humor. Get it if you don’t have it. A too-often overlooked classic.