“Well, we certainly didn’t mean to poison you.”
It’s a late August afternoon in England, and the three members of Saint Etienne are attempting to provide some much-needed emotional support over Zoom. I have just confronted them with the fact that their recent decision to split up is both premature and ludicrous. And the fact that they are bidding farewell to their fans with a glorious party record — “International,” the trio’s 13th album — is particularly venomous.
“Oh, no. What have we done to you?” says keyboardist Pete Wiggs with a laugh.
“We definitely wanted to go out with an album that didn’t sound like a last record,” says keyboardist and author Bob Stanley. “We were also referencing our debut [1991’s ‘Foxbase Alpha’], with its upbeat kind of positivity. That was intentional.”
“I feel this record might make people want to go back and relisten to our previous work,” adds Sarah Cracknell, the band’s lead singer and co-songwriter. “There are so many elements of what we’ve done in the past, that maybe they’ll go, ‘Yeah, I forgot about Saint Etienne.’ At least that’s what I’m hoping for anyway.”
Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne.
(Alasdair McLellan)
The band emerged in the early ’90s with a club-friendly cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” but to call it a dance-pop act would be a disservice to the astonishing body of work it’s have amassed during the last 35 years. Yes, many Etienne hits rely on synthetic beats and a certain European, late-night summer glamour, but its mystique is equally informed by the pervasive nostalgia of Burt Bacharach and the cosmopolitan coolness of the ’60s soundtracks by John Barry and Lalo Schifrin.
On 1998’s “Good Humor,” helmed by the Cardigans producer Tore Johansson, the dreamy “Mr. Donut” sounded like a cross between the Beach Boys and Dusty Springfield. The band’s haunting tribute to the Carpenters, “Downey CA,” appeared on 2000’s “Sound of Water” — an icy, melancholy confection, possibly the most fully realized album of its career. And its fastidious standards of excellence have never wavered. “Home Counties,” from 2017, included “Whyteleafe,” a syncretic gem of harpsichord-fueled baroque, electro bass lines and vocals that both cherish and re-create the delights of vintage British pop. Last year’s radical “The Night” delved into an angelic strand of beatless ambient.
Why call it quits, then?
“We had been talking about playing live again, which we haven’t done in a while, and we all agreed that we didn’t want to go around in a transit van anymore because we’re getting to a certain age and it’s not good for the joints,” explains Stanley. “I think it was either me or Sarah who mentioned the idea of quitting while we were ahead.”
“I was very much aware of leaving our legacy intact,” agrees Cracknell. “That sounds really wanky, I know, but it seems like it’s the right time for us. Personally, there’s nothing that I’m not proud of about everything we’ve done.”
The band is certainly not alone in that assessment. Its commercial success has been moderate during the past two decades, but a virtual gallery of British musical royalty appears on “International.” A duet with Haircut 100’s Nick Heyward, “The Go-Betweens” boasts the angular chorus of an ’80s radio anthem, while Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll lends his magic to the tribal bounce of “Take Me to the Pilot.” The new wave languor of “Two Lovers” was concocted in tandem with synth-pop wizard Vince Clarke.
“We didn’t really know Vince until he did a remix for us,” says Stanley. “I dropped him a line to thank him, and we went for a curry. A lovely bloke, and easy to get on with. Likewise, I bumped into Nick Heyward at a Jewish book festival where I was interviewing 10cc’s Graham Gouldman. Apart from those two, we’ve known everyone else on the record for the longest time.”
Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne.
(Alasdair McLellan)
The Saint Etienne universe is expansive by nature, and the band’s 13 albums are only the tip of the iceberg. During the past decade, Stanley published three music journalism books: one on the birth of popular music, another on its 20th century apex and a more recent one on the Bee Gees. Together with Wiggs — a childhood friend — but also on his own, and with Saint Etienne, he has curated more than two dozen compilations that span from ’90s downtempo to early ’70s French chanson and the sounds of Liverpool in the second half of the ’60s.
“If you’re true to yourself, your musical influences are going to come out directly in your songwriting or production work,” says Stanley. “The compilations are mostly things that we love, and it’s like a world that you can get into. The older we get, the more we know — so the world gets bigger, I suppose. But it definitely fits all together.”
And then, of course, there are the B-sides. Few bands have celebrated the concept of a B-side as an excuse to explore all sorts of oblique ideas and atmospheric impressions with the glee of Saint Etienne. Its output in that respect is monumental, and the group has produced almost as many experimental sketches as regular album tracks. A 2017 reissue campaign of most of its records as double-CD sets, and fan-club releases such as 2008’s legendary “Boxette” — a four-disc collection of obscurities — are a treasure trove.
“Growing up in the ’80s, there were a lot of British bands like China Crisis or the Teardrop Explodes that had a massive hit, but on the B-side did more experimental stuff,” says Wiggs. “That’s what you can do on a B-side; you can exercise your more weird muscles — and that’s one weird metaphor. Playing around in the studio is always fun.”
“It’s a bit like doing something when no one’s looking,” adds Cracknell. “Like doing it in secret, isn’t it? No one is going to see this, but then they do. One of my favorite B-sides is the Jam’s ‘The Butterfly Collector.’”
I ask the members of Saint Etienne what it was about the old ’60s records by Bacharach and Barry that captured their imagination so vividly with their blissful melancholy as a permanent state of being.
Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne.
(Alasdair McLellan)
“When you listen to Bacharach or Lalo Schifrin, you think of a sports car driving through the Alps or something like that,” reflects Stanley. “It’s very aspirational, but quite intangible as well. It’s suggestive of the kind of world where you would like to live in. I remember moving into a 1930s modernist flat and thinking, ‘Oh, no, I’m living like John Barry now.’ It’s something that you want to reach, but you don’t really quite know how to do it.”
“My dad wasn’t into music at all, but he randomly happened to pick up an amazing selection of cassettes,” says Wiggs. “There was a Beach Boys compilation, the debut album by Kate Bush, Simon and Garfunkel. I still love all the moods in that kind of stuff.”
The band plans to follow the release of “International” with a farewell tour highlighting its greatest hits. In the meantime, the members are beginning to think about what life after Saint Etienne could look like.
“I can’t really think past the next year and a half of doing shows and stuff like that,” says Cracknell. “I think about ridiculous things like fostering cats, or remodeling cottages in Italy. Maybe I’ll write a book, or get back into acting.”
“I’m doing a soundtrack that I need to finish,” says Wiggs. “It would be nice to do the odd EP here and there, DJing and writing music under different names.”
“I’ve still got two books that I’m contracted to write at some point — that’ll probably take me to being 70,” says Stanley, with a laugh. “There’s an old tramway that needs volunteers. And I always liked the idea of being a primary school teacher before all this took off. It would be nice.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
