Tales from Turnpike House is the seventh studio album by English alternative dance band Saint Etienne, released on 13 June 2005 by Sanctuary Records. It is a concept album in which the songs depict characters who all live in the eponymous block of flats in London.
Setting
The exact setting of the stories told by the album's setting is somewhat amorphous. The real Turnpike House is a high-rise block of flats in Goswell Road, EC1, an area of ex-council blocks between Clerkenwell and Upper Street. The band had spent a lot of time in Turnpike House, as filmmaker Paul Kelly lived there during the period in which they were collaborating on What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day?. However, Sarah Cracknell has said that the building imagined in the album is "not nearly as smart" as the real Turnpike House.
| rev1 = AllMusic
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| rev2 = The A.V. Club
| rev2score = A−
| rev3 = Entertainment Weekly
| rev3score = B+
| rev4 = The Guardian
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| rev5 = Los Angeles Times
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| rev6 = Pitchfork
| rev6score = 7.8/10
| rev7 = Q
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| rev9 = Slant Magazine
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| rev10 = Spin
| rev10score = B
Tales from Turnpike House was very well-received from critics, holding an aggregate 79 out of 100 from Metacritic based on 22 reviews.
Allmusic journalist Andy Kellman called it the band's most organic release since their fourth album Good Humor, highlighting Turnpike<nowiki>'</nowiki>s concept as allowing "for a range of material that's as broad as what can be heard on any other Saint Etienne album." However, a reviewer from Q was the most negative towards the album. He found Saint Etienne's brand of indie disco "dated" and bashed the lyrical content as "a concept album of kitchen-sink dramas about Tony The Milkman and Doris The Housewife".