The song reached number 28 on the UK Singles Charts and also became a hit in Iceland, peaking at number In common with the folk music theme of the album, the song combines a Eurodance beat with Spanish folk-style guitars. The lyrics use surreal imagery to describe a man's love for a mysterious woman.
In an interview with Melody Maker magazine, keyboard player Pete Wiggs said that he considers the song "potentially brilliant" but "a bit of a failure"; he feels that the band "stuck too rigidly to our folk idea". He also adds that they only chose Spanish guitar so that they could go to Spain for the video [1]. The cover art for the single features photographs of swimming tigers , presumably in reference to the album title.
Tim Sendra from AllMusic praised "Pale Movie" as "one of their "strongest, most emotional songs", feeling that "the melancholy fairly oozes from the aching strings, the very sad chords, and Sarah Cracknell 's unusually emotional vocals. Bunting, please. This is so sleek you could enter it in the Grand National , so cool you could store perfume in it, and so perfectly crafted carpenters will be weeping into their glueless dovetails for weeks.
It bleeps and bloops, and then castanets and Spanish guitars are left to snap and glissande over the top of it. With a bit of patience the same flower can flourish out of this synth pop band as happened last year to the Beloved.
Go la-la with the Saints as their latest dip into the pop palette comes up with a Spanish sunset yellow that rattles your castanets and perks up your paella with a saucy salsa beat. The accompanying music video for "Pale Movie" was shot in Spain and features the band riding around the countryside of Nerja on scooters. All tracks were written and composed by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version.
