Back in the mists of our early days circa ooh, late 2002/ early 2003, the fledgling W&H received an EP from a promising NYC quintet called SAINTFACE. Unlike the then de-rigeur crop of Strokes-alikes oozing from the great city, they wrote songs full of wine, women and loss with an Anglophile bent and a widescreen sweep that was the antithesis of the angularity doing its’ omnipresent rounds. Whoa, we thought: here’s one to watch in the next 12 months or so.
And then…nothing. Apparently. Because the next thing we know almost three long years have gone by and there’s been no sign of Saintface until now, when they’ve re-appeared – apparently out of nowhere – with a debut album called “Apartment Stories” fuelled by even more of the wine, women and loss of the EP, not to mention side orders of temptation, lust and frustration and a heightened sense of the immediate, dramatic (Brit)pop they were threatening to specialise in.
So let’s get on the case at last. Saintface are based in New York and they are Peter Riley (vocals), David Blake (guitars), Joseph Babic (bass), Andy Elder (drums) and keyboard player Michael Parkin. Their album “Apartment Stories” may have taken an almost Stone Roses-style aeon to arrive in our lap, but by God, now it has it should be petted and treated with the utmost love and respect.
Just to remind us why we swooned over them to begin with, the songs from the “Hudson & Day” EP are again featured here. The title track is still the very epitome of dashing and debonair with a great, swelling chorus and a cooler than cool vocal from Riley. “Eight Days A Week”, meanwhile ISN’T anything to do with The Beatles, but it’s a majestic cruise of a song full of romantic longing, while the other song I was previously aware of (“New York’s Favourite Plaything”) showcases a harsher brooding side to Saintface: all fuzzed-up basslines and a dense atmosphere akin to The Smiths’ “Shoplifters Of The World Unite.”
But the great news is that there’s much more where these come from. The classic Britpop crunch of “A Few Kind Women” introduces Riley and co as the classiest young rakes about town, drowning their sorrows downtown while they chat up the best-looking waitresses around. Riley clearly has potential as a great crooner and while the likes of Neil Hannon, Jarvis Cocker and even El Moz do inevitably spring to mind, he has charisma to spare in his own right and the way he can build up a plot in a few simple, but well-turned phrases soon hooks you in. He does it to great effect on the ensuing “That Word Is Love” – a ridiculously immediate Smiths-cum-Motown affair – when he opens with “you’re moving to my town/ and all the birds start to sing again/ the leaves leap off the ground/ and all the bells start to ring again.” It doesn’t sound that remarkable on paper, but when allied with his persuasive croon and the band’s imploring rush it’s nigh on the perfect scene-setter.
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He does it again to great effect on the exultant “Hand On My Heart” (opening couplet: “So much for that lazy summer/ that rented room where we’d read each other”) where his poor-boy-falls-for-rich-girl longing is swept along beautifully by the band’s intuitive playing and dominates the tempting, but somehow cautionary “There Is A Room” where it’s clear that playing the field leaves its’ emotional scratches as well as its’ notches on the bedpost.
Elsewhere, the band continue to prove their mettle with the Noel Gallagher-style guitar aggression of “Never Leave My Mind” and whip up a storm on the Pulp-style stomper that is “It Can’t Mean Much”, where Riley gives apparently short shrift to a love-sick buddy (“you’re still young and you could sell off your shares or something”). Arguably even better, though, are the suave and cinematic likes of “More Than I Love Love” and the show-stopping “You Belong To Me”: the inevitable, grand-piano drenched finale which features Riley’s finest vocal performance and a brace of last-gasp lyricism (“when the wolves are at your door/ and the fools are on TV/ the one thing you can know is you belong to me”) which ensures ‘epic weepie’ is stamped through the song like the best Blackpool rock.
“Apartment Stories”, then, is a debut with a twinkle in its’ eye, some surreptitious stains on its’ sheets and lasting scars on its’ heart. It might superficially suggest a hot and steamy affair, but it goes deeper the more you dally, and when Riley sings “we could meet each other somewhere more interesting than halfway” (“Hudson & Day”) you simply know Saintface are going to demand no less than total commitment in the future. Hook up and get dating without delay.
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