Saint Etienne Bliss Revisited

Had a decision last Saturday between either going to see Saint Etienne or Alice Coltrane. It wasn't really a decision because the goddess Alice was at UCLA, and being carless on the eastside of Los Angeles, it is just patently impossible (or hell on earth) to get to Westwood via MTA. I just won't do it. So I had really made my decision weeks before (partly to salve the sting of Incognito doing ONLY an East Coast tour... which I'm sorry, might've been acceptable in 1993, but not f*cking in 06) that I was going to see SE.
After a criminal warm-up set of Motown pastiche (the most obvious triteness ("You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (I love Marvin and Stevie as much as the next boy (though Terry Callier and Leroy Hutson are my real gods), but those songs don't speak to either of their genius)), the SE selections kicked in, starting off with some nice deep funk, then moving into more cliche but still sweeter terrain ("Working My Way Back to You...") before the brilliant ones actually came out. Like most, I've always loved Saint Etienne, and recall "Nothing Can Stop Us" as one of the three most seminal songs in my sonic development (the other two being Massive's "Safe from Harm" and Galliano's "Welcome to the Story" (my true anthem) – all three first heard on KCRW's SNAP circa 91-92). But deciding on Swing Out Sister as my religion (they are the most flawlessly burnished/purely SUBLIME outfit of the past three decades, and Somewhere Deep in the Night, Filth + Dreams, and Shapes + Patterns are all now in my ten most crucial discs, ever) has slightly taken some of the SE lustre off. That doesn't mean I don't still worship them, and I do think parts of Turnpike House are the most shimmeringly lovely sides they've cut in years.
All that said, much of Turnpike sounded gorgeous live ("Stars Above Us" (much better than on record) and the Bacharach-bossa "3rd Street" chief among the best-in-translation), "Spring" and "Nothing" were as transcendent as ever (and I did kick some bitches out of the way to give me enough room to pony), and it was, though far from religious, a beautiful night out.