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Title: Niiice.
Review: St. Germain do for jazz what Portishead did for the torch song - take a now-marginal, nostalgia-muffled form and update it with glacial modern production, while retaining the potent pleasures of the old form. the first five tracks of 'Tourist' are sheer bliss: the straight, allusive bop rush of 'Rose Rouge'; the Wes Montgomery-strum to a languid trip hop backing of 'Montego Bay Spleen'. 'So Flute' is actually so piano, that instrument extemporising thrillingly; as are the next two - the supposedly trumpet-driven 'Land of...' is usurped by a gorgeous melodic epiphany, while the xylophone reverie of 'Latin Note' bows to the staccato.No album could sustain that level of dreamy excitement, and there is a drop. It's not that the music's bad: 'Sure Thing' is a dirty great blues beast, while 'La Goutte D'Or' is that rare thing, disco-jazz; but the slackening of discipline leads to occasional attention-wandering.
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