English weather : Bob Stanley & Pete Wiggs present

"A relief, then, to retreat from the divisive gloom of today and luxuriate in a tepid grey bath of one-size-fits-all early 70s gloom. Sky of slate, couture and soft furnishings of Bisto. If Eno had recorded Another Green World three or four years earlier, it would have been called Another Brown World. And so on. English Weather, immaculately compiled by RC columnist Bob Stanley and fellow citizen of Saint Etienne, Pete Wiggs, is the aural expression of a very specific form of eagerly indulged, dream-is-over dejection".

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"The sound of the post-60s hangover ... The Saint Etienne crate-diggers have unearthed some evocative obscurities from that moment in British rock between psych and prog ... what's really arresting about English Weather is how unified and coherent it sounds. How the disparate elements come together and paint a remarkably vivid picture of an era. Everything here is of a really high quality: you wonder how so much of it went unnoticed, and whether it's because the bar was set high 40-odd years ago, or because the compilers are adept at finding the one great track on otherwise unremarkable albums. Everything is shot through with the same autumnal melancholy ... English Weather tells an alternative story, using the stuff that fell through the cracks to create something really compelling and immersive: it's a pleasure to lose yourself in it.

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