With their melancholic disco singles and album statements, Saint Etienne had been probably the most underrated bands of the 90s. We spoke to them in 2017 as they launched their ninth LP, Residence Counties… By Paul Lester
With their mash-up of Swinging Sixties imagery and melodies with fashionable know-how and digital beats, Saint Etienne – Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell – had been an emblematic 90s outfit.
In a means, they kickstarted that decade with their 1990 debut single, a dubby, housed-up model of Neil Younger’s Solely Love Can Break Your Coronary heart that caught the saggy, rave-era temper of “aciid”-tinged euphoria.
It was a time of anything-goes mixing and matching: in Manchester, The Stone Roses had been busy allying Byrdsian bliss-pop with danceable grooves and Completely satisfied Mondays had been turning scuffed indie and funk into one scabrous cocktail whereas down south Primal Scream had been proving that you can incorporate components of krautrock, The Seaside Boys, nation and Lee “Scratch” Perry, typically inside a single tune.
Saint Etienne had been avatars of this “file assortment rock”, evincing a dizzying array of influences. However though Stanley would possibly joke that, just like the militant quasi-anthem by Denim – the early-90s neo-bubblegum outfit fronted by Lawrence (Hayward), previously of Creation indie rockers Felt – he was “in opposition to the 80s”, Saint Etienne didn’t dismiss the period out of hand.
For starters, ABC’s state-of-the-art Northern soul and Brill Constructing-inflected post-disco was an apparent precursor, and he and Wiggs would commonly namecheck Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Darkish’s Dazzle Ships as a key launch of their idiosyncratic private pantheon.
In addition they acknowledged Pet Store Boys as pioneers of their form of emotionally partaking, melancholy dancefloor entreaties.
After all, they might by no means have labored as a synth duo like PSBs, Yazoo or Blancmange as a result of neither of them may sing.
Fortunately, these avowed non-musicians with extra concepts than instrumental prowess had as their secret weapon the divine Ms Cracknell, whose breathy voice alluded to all method of 60s French pop and woman teams and gave Saint Etienne that additional dimension.
These backroom boys with their latterday Julie Christie (Cracknell’s actress mom had been a reasonably, blonde mainstay of 60s British TV) on the mic had been in some way, concurrently, lo-fi London-philes (their earliest recordings had been achieved in producer Ian Catt’s bed room studio in Pollards Hill, close to Mitcham) and Euro-glamorous, with a hi-tech sheen.
They’d one foot in mid-80s “cutie”/C86 indie tradition (certainly, Croydon boys Stanley and Wiggs had their very own fanzine, Caff) however additionally they liked Chicago home and Detroit techno.
An intoxicating melange
Their genius was to deliver all of those disparate components collectively.
On their 1991 debut album Foxbase Alpha and attendant singles Okiss And Make Up and Nothing Can Cease Us, they had been equal elements Screamadelica and Sarah Information: think about The Subject Mice in Ibiza, undercut by a fin-de-siecle disappointment.
“One of many issues that impressed me was when Martin Fry stated, ‘ABC are going to soundtrack the 80s’,” remembers Stanley. Whereas the opposite two are interviewed in individual, he’s on the cellphone from Saltair, a creative group in Yorkshire the place he lives together with his spouse and younger son (though he nonetheless has a house in North London).
“Speak about condemning your self to not reside as much as your hyperbole! However we went within the studio in January 1990 [to record Only Love…] to attempt to do exactly that.”
He chuckles on the audacity, even madness, of all of it. Truly, they’d a five-year plan, due to the David Bowie tune, and since that was typically how lengthy bands lasted.
He wonders whether or not, however the plundering from so many locations and durations, and regardless of the eight albums they’ve made since – as much as and together with 2017’s usually fantastic Residence Counties – in the end Saint Etienne at the moment are considered a 90s band.
“I definitely wouldn’t be embarrassed if somebody referred to as us a 90s band, which we get quite a bit,” avers Stanley, who previous to forming the group with Wiggs labored as a contract music journalist for Melody Maker. “It doesn’t trouble me cos we did quite a bit within the 90s, and there was a variety of good music.”
He pauses to compile a psychological checklist, one with a presumably ironic flourish – you by no means know with the deadpan, prodigiously pop-omnivorous Stanley (his 2013 e book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story Of Fashionable Pop actually lined each facet of the music).
“The KLF, The Prodigy, Pet Store Boys, um, Whigfield…” He definitely “by no means wished to be a type of teams, like Mari Wilson or The Maisonettes, who clearly wished to reside in a earlier decade”.
“It felt just like the 80s had ended two years earlier than [1990],” he continues. “Acid home felt like the start of a brand new decade – that’s what we had been born from. After I consider the 80s I consider 1980-’82, not the dire stuff on the finish of the last decade like Go West or Then Jericho. We had been undoubtedly In opposition to The 80s in that sense.
“However we had been clearly impressed by C86 aesthetically – cos of the DIY facet and cos me and Pete wrote that fanzine. However we all the time liked pop music and the truth that, firstly of the 90s, the charts had been immediately populated by outsiders and lunatics like The KLF, who had been the most important band within the nation for a yr, which was mind-blowing, and is difficult to see occurring once more.
“Additionally, again then, you can purchase keyboards for 100 quid from Loot, which is how we began. We did Foxbase Alpha on finances tools at Ian Catt’s studio in his bed room at his mum and pop’s home, with a reel-to-reel tape recorder – this was earlier than DAT and reminiscence sticks. It was all very DIY, low-cost and cheerful. However in some way, you can get into the Prime 40.”
In truth, Saint Etienne acquired into the Prime 40 no fewer than 14 occasions between 1990 and 2005, the yr of their final excessive chart entry. What number of data do they suppose they’ve offered in whole? Thousands and thousands?
“I’d have thought so,” says Cracknell, ever a imaginative and prescient of English loveliness – she and a fashionably bearded Wiggs meet Basic Pop in a North London cafe (effectively, in fact they do), travelling from their properties, respectively, in Oxfordshire and close to Brighton. “We used to promote various data again within the 90s. We’ve acquired a few 100,000-selling Gold albums and a few Silvers.”
Had been they the proverbial Huge In Japan? “Momentarily.” Wiggs laughs on the reminiscence of being chased down the road in Tokyo by followers on a college outing, though, ever self-deprecating, he believes it was extra possible the lecturers than the pupils doing the screaming.
Hitting the heights
Saint Etienne had their greatest hits with 1992’s Be part of Our Membership, 1993’s You’re In A Dangerous Way and Hobart Paving, 1994’s Pale Film, 1995’s He’s On The Cellphone and 1998’s Sylvie and The Dangerous Photographer.
They initially used Beats Worldwide’s 1990 No.1 hit Dub Be Good To Me because the mannequin for what might be achieved with a dextrous mix of melody and beat science, and ended up, if not soundtracking the 90s, producing music that stored up with technological advances whereas remaining in some way timeless.
They had been friends of these different 60s-referencing pop home sorts Deee-Lite and Betty Boo, southern counterparts of esoteric Mancunians World Of Twist and Intastella, and in the identical ballpark as experimental electronicists The Excessive Llamas and Stereolab.
However they had been regulars on Prime Of The Pops and had, within the early days, Oasis and Pulp supporting them – the video for Pulp’s Infants was filmed within the north London flat shared by Stanley and Wiggs – even when they had been by no means actually a part of the Britpop social gathering.
Wiggs – at present finding out in his spare time for a postgraduate diploma in Movie Scoring (in 2014 he wrote and carried out the music for the film 12 months 7) – remembers the early days of Saint Etienne, when he and Stanley would dabble with “rudimentary melodies” with facilitator Catt and “in some way cobble collectively” songs, with concepts of samples of their heads.
They had been most likely at an analogous degree of non-proficiency as The Human League. “None of us had been ok to take a seat down with a guitar and piano and ‘jam’,” as Stanley places it.
In a means, at that time, they had been a digital band, a studio chimera – “an experiment, actually,” decides Wiggs. The intention at first was to usher in totally different feminine singers to entrance every launch: Moira Lambert sang on Solely Love… whereas Donna Savage was vocalist on follow-up single Kiss And Make Up.
Being a fully-functioning performing unit wasn’t actually on the playing cards till Cracknell joined. A drama pupil from Windsor, she had been in an indie band referred to as The Nervous Parachutes earlier than transferring to London at 17.
She had stints with different acts, however following her vocal on third Saint Etienne single Nothing Can Cease Us she turned a full-time member. She, too, remembers their untutored early days (“scattergun” is how she describes their method), and admits that, when it comes to prowess, they’ve improved immeasurably within the quarter-century since.
“We’re quite a bit higher now,” she laughs, ordering a scorching chocolate as Wiggs settles for a cider.
Based on Stanley, their musical means – or lack of similar – didn’t hinder their ambition.
“We really thought Solely Love… may do one thing. After which Dub Be Good To Me went to No.1 and [the danced-up cover of] Strawberry Fields Ceaselessly by Sweet Flip reached No.3 and we thought, ‘There you go!’ It didn’t appear that unlikely, though on the similar time it did appear a bit ridiculous cos we had been all the time following our muse with a number of in-jokes and references to issues,” he provides of the snippets of dialogue and unusual ambient interludes on Foxbase Alpha and 1993’s follow-up, So Robust, impressed by arcane Dexys Midnight Runners album tracks and Teardrop Explodes B-sides.
Like The Smiths, they created their very own self-contained universe, with their very own idiosyncratic iconography. “We had been cocky,” says Stanley, “but additionally fairly odd.”
So cocky, in reality, that in one of many final articles he wrote for Melody Maker – a chunk on the brand new wave of post-Roses/Mondays wannabes similar to Northside and Flowered Up – he sneaked in a point out of Saint Etienne.
“I believed, ‘Let’s see what occurs’. And the labels acquired in contact! It was extremely cheeky, however it labored.”
Freeway to heavenly
Saint Etienne signed to Heavenly and took their “shared love of minor chords and dance music” to the toppermost of the poppermost, or at the very least to Prime Of The Pops the place, for his or her first look (for You’re In A Dangerous Approach), they shared the Borehamwood stage with East 17 (Stanley remembers Brian Harvey enjoying pool on the bar with “Mandy from EastEnders”, Nicola Stapleton), 2 Limitless and Rolf Harris doing Stairway To Heaven.
“Our first time on is embedded in my thoughts,” Stanley says. “It was superb. The entire place had that British Rail gravy odor that you simply didn’t get anyplace anymore. It was trapped in time – like being in a sitcom within the 70s.
“I used to be a wood mannequin of myself onstage – I barely moved – however it felt like, ‘That’s it.’ It was like enjoying within the cup remaining at Wembley. It was all the time going to be a pinnacle of my life, and I used to be fairly conscious of that because it was occurring.”
Being on TOTP strongly hinted to Wiggs that his choice to jack in his job in “cellphone assist” wasn’t as hasty as he first thought. Then, someday throughout a picnic in Highbury Fields, somebody approached him for an autograph, and that confirmed it.
“It was like I’d staged it,” he laughs, nonetheless amazed. “It was actually weird – like, I’ve achieved the suitable factor right here.”
For Cracknell, the second of realisation – that Saint Etienne had actually change into a mainstream proposition – got here throughout their efficiency on the primary stage at Glastonbury in 1994.
“Once we walked out to 30,000 individuals,” she sighs on the reminiscence. “We acquired there actually late, and didn’t have sufficient time to take it on board. I didn’t presume tons of individuals would come and watch us, so it was an actual, ‘Wow!’ second.
“I’ve watched footage of it and I seem like the cat who acquired the cream,” she says, though Wiggs admits he was so overwhelmed by the event, he was petrified into whole stasis.
Sounds of the town
Their first three albums – Foxbase Alpha, So Robust and 1994’s Tiger Bay – had been all recorded in London and are thought of by Stanley to be of a chunk. For the superb, and ignored, Good Humor (1998) the band decamped to Sweden to work with Cardigans producer Tore Johansson.
It was their bid to shake off their status because the quintessential Londoners – they even gave “humor” an American spelling.
“All of us acquired a flat in Malmö for that one,” Stanley reminisces. “It was terrific – I’ve extremely fond reminiscences of residing and consuming collectively, like The Beatles in Assist!
“That,” he explains, “was the primary album the place all of us wrote collectively as effectively – for the primary three, me and Pete wrote collectively and Sarah wrote individually. That’s how we’ve all the time labored since.”
Stanley sees Good Humor and the following two albums – 2000’s Sound Of Water (recorded in Berlin, with preparations by To Rococo Rot and Sean O’Hagan) and 2002’s Finisterre – as one other apparent grouping, and the beginning of “one other period” for the band.
And he would put the following three – 2005’s Tales From Turnpike Home, 2012’s Phrases And Music and the brand new Residence Counties – collectively.
The latter is a “fairly free” (Wiggs’ phrases) idea concerning the commuter belt that manages to make such retro material partaking by populating the songs with vibrant characters (such because the Church Pew Furnishings Restorer and the Prepare Drivers In Eyeliner), and filling the songs with elegantly hummable melodies.
Stanley could be a fan of rock’s cult heroes or marginal eccentrics, whose trajectories had been marked by vertiginous highs and subterranean lows, however his group have by no means gone off the rails.
Did they by no means have a mad second, when fame went to their heads? “There was a time,” mutters Wiggs over the thump of Private Jesus on the cafe stereo, “after we went a bit nuts, and if we’d carried on that means we would have ended up…”
“…very ailing,” Cracknell finishes his sentence.
When requested why their pals in Pulp turned so profitable whereas Saint Etienne maintained a gradual, modest path, they ascribe it to Pulp’s superb reside type and the truth that, as Cracknell says, “They had been completely prepared for it”.
And since Saint Etienne didn’t launch an album for 4 years, they had been by no means actually lumped in with the Britpop huge, even when Oasis did assist them in Glasgow and Birmingham, the place Wiggs remembers them being
“full-on rock’n’roll”.
In contrast to lots of their friends, who shone brightly then pale away, Saint Etienne are in it for the lengthy haul. All the higher for pop students to check them over the space.
The sleevenotes that accompanied their albums by the likes of Jon Savage and Simon Reynolds, and their reclaiming of the capital as a psychogeographic house (London Belongs To Me, certainly), have afforded Saint Etienne a brainy attract.
And but they did have correct hits – even one, 7 Methods To Love, in 1991 as Cola Boy – that proved they’d “the frequent contact”. However are they actually extra of a theorist’s delight, making conceptual pop music for educational sorts?
“I don’t suppose we conceal our mild beneath a bushel,” says Stanley of the suggestion they’re bookish and much from the degenerate rocker stereotype, including that he “would like to domesticate a mystique”. Reality is, none of them have ever suffered a meltdown.
“I learn this interview with Justin Hayward [of The Moody Blues] the place he stated: ‘Acid? I took it 10 or 11 occasions, then I realised that’s most likely sufficient.’ So smart! We had been most likely like that. All of us took medication and did issues we shouldn’t have wanting again, however we had been very smart. Very Residence Counties.”
Residence Counties is out on Heavenly Recordings
