Saint Etienne - Retrofuturist dances

Acid-house and Sixties English pop, electronic dance beats and synth-pop melodies, samples of songs and films, seductive chill-out atmospheres. An explosive blend of sounds filtered through the decade's most refined taste and enhanced by a velvety, enchanting voice. Saint Etienne are all this and more. An epic that colored the Cool Britannia of the Nineties, steeping it in the multicolored atmosphere of its capital city.

London calling

London, early Nineties. Two DJs, producers and journalists, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, friends since childhood, decide to join forces and chase their musical dreams. By their side they find a blonde chanteuse with an enchanting voice named Sarah Cracknell, daughter of Derek Cracknell, former first assistant director to Sir Stanley Kubrick. At first she isn't the only singer chosen to give voice to the duo's electronic compositions. There's also Moira Lambert, who sings Saint Etienne's first hit single, the cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", and Donna Savage, who appears on the following single "Kiss And Make Up". But Cracknell is made of different stuff, and in the end it's she who will permanently claim the microphone.

And then there's that French name, which brings to mind a new french touch reincarnation in the style of Air, yet sounds so jarring for a project that's British to its core. Not a tribute to the city of the same name, but to its football club, with its storied past, also graced by the class of a young Michel Platini. A tribute made tangible by the very intro of their debut album, Foxbase Alpha: "This Is Radio Etienne", nothing more than a clip from a French football radio broadcast.

And yet, Saint Etienne are among the standard-bearers of the UK's pop renaissance in the Nineties. And in their music they captured the spirit of their city on an almost cellular level. It's as if they'd left the studio windows open during the recording sessions and London, with its sounds and the urban harmonies of the millions of people who live there, had slipped into the tapes and between the microphones, forever trapped there, a witness to the passing of time.

Having settled in Camden, Saint Etienne signed with the indie label Heavenly. And, after a short run of singles kicked off by the aforementioned cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," they released their first album, bearing the evocative title Foxbase Alpha (1991).

The race to pigeonhole them began at once. The English press called them indie-dance. Someone else simply slapped a generic crossover label on them for lack of better terms. Radio stations in 1991 weren't quite sure whether to play them in the Friday night dance slot or just everywhere, because there wasn't actually much to dance to. Critics called them "amateurish", because that slightly homemade sound certainly didn't sit well next to the glossier sound playing in the in clubs of the moment. It sounded like house but was already something else. Pop? Sure, there are nods to a certain Sixties aesthetic – including a well-known sample borrowed from the lady of white soul, Dusty Springfield – as well as a melodic streak close to the synthetic Eighties and to Sarah Records-style indie-pop, but it's all brilliantly transfigured. Trip-hop? After all, 1991 is also the year of Massive Attack's "Blue Lines", but of the Bristol sound only a hint can be glimpsed. Just as faint are the dub or dubstep influences. And certainly those clips of arthouse films inserted as bridges between tracks, along with that wholesale recycling of the most varied sound sources, don't help define any single identity. Hard to pin them down, then. And pointless, too.

Branded with an enigmatic cover featuring a model named Celina Nash, with the band relegated to a small box on the back of the CD, Foxbase Alpha is an album far removed from the fashions of its time and, at the same time, almost an instant classic. Pulling it up the charts was a single, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", a cover of a Neil Young classic (from "After The Gold Rush") sung not by Sarah Cracknell but by Moira Lambert, voice of the indie-pop band Faith Over Reason. The transformation is remarkable: the original's waltz time is translated into 4/4, and in the chorus the chords all turn minor, so Lambert's crystalline voice sounds melancholy and heightens the lyrics, while a thunderous bass/drum section, mixed with keyboards, carries the track a couple of decades forward. The following track, "Wilson", is a true sonic anti-climax, a minimalist non-song if there ever was one, built on an obscure sample: a repeated voice of a grandmother asking her grandson "Would you like some sweets, Willy? Would you like some sweets, Willy? What would you like?".

But it's with "Carn't Sleep" (spelled that way, with the "r" in the middle) that we truly enter the heart of the record: the melody is lifted from a basic Jamaican dub riff and keeps its faintly melancholic spirit intact. Cracknell's voice, however, carries us from the sun-drenched beaches of the Caribbean to the long shadows of buildings at sunset over Victoria Park, East London. Accompanied by flutes, "Girl VII" is an imaginary atlas, between London and unspecified exotic places, possibly South American, another example of sinuous, dreamy electronic pop. "Spring", with its warm funky tones and dreamy atmospheres, is a ray of sunshine through the clouds covering the city. By contrast, "Stoned To Say The Least" is the city's flip side: a long instrumental drone, far more introspective and darker in tone, à la Massive Attack.

The second single, "Nothing Can Stop Us Now", is the track that most closely echoes the sunny, nostalgic Sixties sound of something like "Scandal", unleashing the famous Dusty Springfield sample. It would be re-recorded a second time by Saint Etienne, with Kylie Minogue on vocals, a couple of years later. "London Belongs To Me" is a tender ballad, embellished with classical-style harpsichord and flute arrangements, yet shot through with powerful waves of electronics. As the title suggests, it's a love letter to the city on a sunny day. Counterbalancing it comes the new, mysterious drone of "Like The Swallow", which sounds as if it were recorded in the middle of rush-hour traffic: it only opens up and closes around the midpoint, carried by a drum crescendo, with Cracknell's crystalline voice intoning a brief, Morricone-esque film-score melody, punctuated by a bell: the noise swallows it up again at the end, with what sounds like a distorted sitar.

The closer, rather démodé, is left to "Dilworth's Theme", a very short and murky composition for voice and piano, probably recorded at home during a children's recital.

Sarah's jewels

Foxbase Alpha is such a smash that it earns Saint Etienne cult status with just one album under their belt. The follow-up arrives two years later and is titled So Tough. If one wanted to find a flaw, it could be said right away (as some detractors of the band noted at the time) that it's almost the twin brother of Foxbase Alpha. There are no real sonic or stylistic innovations to speak of. The cover retains the same format (again featuring Celina Nash, this time pictured as a child) as does the booklet (with beautiful photos of teenage faces captured on the streets of the capital). Film clips return as bridges between tracks, along with samples and various influences, craftily stitched together. And there's still that mysterious sound, which is supposed to be dance but is in fact far more hybrid.

The tracks closer to the song form are even more mature than those on the debut, holding together better. Although there's no lead single as strong as "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", it could be said that "Avenue" and "Hobart Paving" probably remain, even today, the two finest songs Saint Etienne ever wrote. The former (also released as a single) stretches out for over seven minutes, with Sarah Cracknell's melancholy vocalizing standing out crystal-clear, alternating with layers of pure noise. The latter, meanwhile, is a splendid acoustic torch song that uses the most basic piano accompaniment imaginable (think "Hey Jude") to unspool a tender melody sung masterfully and inlaid with the lightest synthetic guitars, a piece of songwriting one would never expect from DJs on the hunt for samples to clone.

If the smooth jazzy opening of "Mario's Cafe" is a perfect soundtrack for waking up feeling like a million bucks, the following "Railway Jam" – an admirable urban pastiche between techno and industrial – ideally accompanies us on the train ride from home to work. "You're In A Bad Way", another, more hook-laden single, once again pays tribute to Sixties pop sounds, with a frisky bassline and Cracknell's soft voice: a vocal style that would echo often in years to come, starting with productions by Belle And Sebastian (especially those with Isobel Campbell on vocals). "Conchita Martinez", then, does even better, managing to decontextualize a sleazy mueve la colita rhythm by grafting onto it electric guitar riffs and atmospheric keyboards that give it depth.

There's no shortage of more experimental, introverted tracks either, such as the sinuous "Jump The Morgue", the lysergic "No Rainbows For Me" or the dance-floor charge of "Leafhound", but special mention must go to "Calico", which features rapper Q-tee on vocals and (this much can be said without hesitation) owes a clear debt to Massive Attack and the whole Bristol movement. Built on a trance foundation rich in Middle Eastern touches and the steady pulse of a bassline, Q-tee's winding voice delivers a dark, cryptic lyric, giving rise to a gorgeous atmospheric track that it would be a crime not to include on any possible tribute compilation to the trip-hop genre.

If you're going to seek out these songs for a listen, it's also worth tracking down "Paper", a really fine b-side to "Avenue", written by Sarah Cracknell and Maurice Deebank (guitarist of Felt), which with its acoustic atmospheres pays homage to the Velvet Underground.

Though less original and groundbreaking than its celebrated predecessor, So Tough is a great record, full of new, outstanding songs, and highly recommended to anyone wanting to get into the eclectic world of Saint Etienne.

Folktronica Ahead Of Its Time

So Tough would surprisingly also go on to achieve the greatest commercial success Saint Etienne would ever register, reaching as high as number seven on the charts and broadening the audience of a band so atypical, so steeped in refined, exclusive attitude. Perhaps it was this unexpected success, combined with market pressures and the inevitable need to reinvent their sound on a third album, that led Saint Etienne to shift gears and take a sharp new direction with the following Tiger Bay (1994).

Even more ambitious than their previous works, Tiger Bay (which takes its name from the film of the same title) is a sort of concept album loosely based on the theme of death: twelve tracks meant to function as modern folk songs, arranged and produced with more contemporary sounds (dance and techno, in particular, as Bob Stanley would say in an interview). The album was even composed and recorded in a wood in the English countryside to help shape its outcome.

On this basis alone, Tiger Bay would deserve attention. Whether consciously or not, Saint Etienne theorize the folktronica phenomenon before its official arrival. It's also a genuinely varied and original work, though not without its moments of confusion. While it sounds cleaner and more polished in production, it isn't as cohesive as its predecessors, and ends up riding on two different styles that never quite gel. This ambivalence can be read as a mark of quality, but it's also a bit hard to digest, and more often than not it muddies the waters compared to the mastery Saint Etienne had previously shown in blending such disparate styles. Above all, in a couple of tracks, it's a real about-face when the folk side falls away and the dance side takes over, with results that are genuinely below par.

The opening of the instrumental "Urban Clearway" is a synth run down the motorway that owes a real debt to Kraftwerk for its dry pulse and the chord progression that opens up the melodic "chorus": it remains a fine atmospheric piece, rarefied and quite "European", which immediately puts the listener coming from So Tough behind the wheel of a brand-new sports car speeding down the fast lane.

This is how Tiger Bay kicks off, and in the liner notes, written by Stanley and Wiggs' friend and former colleague, journalist Simon Price, we read clearly: ⟦Q1⟧. All that's left is for us to get in the car too, then, and follow Saint Etienne on their new adventure across Europe. Their ability to shuffle the deck and catch you off guard hasn't gone anywhere: just listen to "On The Shore" to be convinced: the voice and intense, evocative soul of Shara Nelson (the vocalist on Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy"), a reggae rhythm, layers of electronics, a main melody entrusted to a pastoral-toned oboe, pinches of mandolin (played like the Chinese lute also heard on Bjork's "Volta") and what sounds like a synthesized didgeridoo (?). A thoroughbred song, proof that Saint Etienne still have plenty left in the tank.

The folk side wins out on "Marble Lions" and "The Boy Scouts Of America": the first is a gorgeous, melancholy melody, punctuated by beautiful guitars; the second, buoyed by a very striking orchestral arrangement, is placed at the close and leaves us with a note of sweet sadness. On the more synthetic side, meanwhile, "Cool Kids Of Death" is a thoroughly enjoyable house experiment that will appeal greatly to fans of the genre.

The problems arise, if anything, with the various singles pulled from the album; "Hug My Soul" fares a little better, with its airy chorus and marimba interlude, echoing the sunnier moments of Foxbase Alpha like "Spring" or "Nothing Can Stop Us Now", but its excessive gloss slightly dulls its strong melodic qualities. "Like A Motorway", meanwhile, dredges up a traditional folk melody from the turn of the last century and recasts it electronically, and while it's genuinely catchy, it's also a little toothless. Even the third single, "Pale Movie", with its techno flourishes fit for a night out in Ibiza and its Spanish-tinged chorus, comes off rather kitsch, and not even Cracknell's lovely voice can rescue it.

It's a shame, because when a stunning track like "Former Lover" comes along (perhaps the absolute high point of the record), Saint Etienne prove themselves to be songwriters of the highest caliber: it takes real skill to craft a song with such unabashedly Dylanesque sonorities, built on nothing more than acoustic guitar and harmonica, without ever sounding pretentious.

The only true example of folktronica fusion as we know it today falls to "Western Wind/Tankerville" (two separate songs on the original release, but spliced together on the remastered version), which takes a traditional melody from the English repertoire of the 1500s and projects it forward half a millennium, with a slow beat somewhere between trip-hop and dance: the result is quite evocative when the strings underscore its madrigal-like atmosphere, suspended between centuries. It's also worth noting that on the American version of Tiger Bay, Saint Etienne reshuffled the track order, dropped some songs and added others, including the fearsome single "He's On The Phone", which would go on to become perhaps their most famous song, but unfortunately also their worst ever, ending up as little more than a rehash of Eighth Wonder.

What Tiger Bay undeniably deserves credit for is its sheer audacity in trying to cram 500 years of music into 46 minutes. Its ever-shifting nature — caught between house and reggae, Dylan and Eurotrash — makes it unique in its own way. Elegantly finished and polished, it showcases a handful of fine songs and confirms the courage of a band that never rested on its laurels. Some of the hardline devotees of Foxbase Alpha and So Tough will be left wrongfooted, but audiences, in any case, responded warmly (number eight on the charts), as did the DJ-set scene: everyone seemed to want to remix a Saint Etienne track and pay tribute to the champions of more refined dance music. The London pioneers are now universally respected by both audiences and critics.

Claims of Good Cheer

In 1996, singer Sarah Cracknell also found time for a solo debut, which she titled Lipslide. The record wouldn't achieve huge success, but it was still well received by the segment of audience and critics loyal to Saint Etienne. The path taken seems to follow on from the one shared with bandmates Stanley and Wiggs on the preceding Tiger Bay, albeit leaning more toward the dancefloor and at the expense of the folk experiments. What we get is an inoffensive, short-shelf-life dance record, which at its best drifts into delicate lounge atmospheres fit for a cocktail bar, without ever being especially compelling to listen to. Plasticky like Dubstar, but without the ironic lyrics, electronic like Sneaker Pimps but without the acid that helps things coalesce, Lipslide passes unnoticed by ears expecting something more from the prestigious voice of Saint Etienne.

Once again we get the dip into 60s-flavored sounds (with the opening "Ready Or Not", which incidentally isn't bad at all), and then, one after another, all the other little songs drift by in a monotonous continuity that never produces a single spark. Just listen to the single "Anymore" to get a sense of the general drift: if you like it, go ahead and keep listening, you'll be on safe ground, otherwise feel free to go and listen to something else.

Sarah Cracknell interrupts the promotion of Lipslide to go back into the studio (this time in Sweden) with Stanley and Wiggs and record the new Saint Etienne album, Good Humor (1998). This time Tore Johansson is also behind the mixing desk (having already worked with Franz Ferdinand, Cardigans, a-ha, Suede and Martha Wainwright, among many, many others), and as a seasoned producer of chart-friendly pop, he pairs Saint Etienne with a lovely acoustic section of strings and horns to steer the band toward sounds more in vogue at the time. Despite the effort, though, the results are rather bland.

It's hard to find a single track truly worth singling out, a hidden "Former Lover" to add to one's own personal best of. Saint Etienne now seem more interested in selling records and climbing the charts (even though, paradoxically, to this day they've never surpassed the number-seven peak of So Tough). Proof of this lies in the fact that the whole of Good Humor (b-sides included) was recorded in just two weeks, a circumstance that sits awkwardly with the project's main ambition: a return to refined, orchestral-pop acoustic sounds.

Johansson's contribution, moreover, doesn't help, steering the band toward a far more conventional brand of pop. The result is an almost moronic melody like "Mr. Donut", which spoils the listening experience of the rest of the album from the outset. "The Bad Photographer" (released as a single) and "Dutch Tv" sound like songs written for All Saints, with the difference that here it's Cracknell's voice singing them. The opener "Wood Cabin" doesn't add much that's new either, hovering somewhere between ABBA and a choir of garden gnomes. Leaning harder into their dance roots, Wiggs and Stanley only really find themselves again on the other single, "Sylvia", which would become one of their best-known songs. The flat "He's On The Phone" is also a disappointment.

Of course, the class hasn't vanished entirely: even when the soul is missing, a certain compositional flair always remains. A vintage-flavored track like "Postman" still comes across as elegant, well-written and well-arranged, gifting us a sweet refrain to sing in the shower. "Split Screen", meanwhile, with its 60s horns and catchy rhythm, would go on to set the template for every Lily Allen still to come (and Mark Ronson certainly took note). Finally, "Erica America" is perhaps the best moment here, with a nostalgic melody straight out of a 70s teen TV show.

If Tiger Bay worked only in fits and starts but still had a thoroughly respectable idea behind it, Good Humor loses its way somewhat, simply lining up eleven pleasant, brightly colored sugar balls one after another, which dissolve in your mouth in an instant without leaving any aftertaste. It's hard to decide, in short, who deserves the slap on the wrist: Johansson, for meddling with his sticky toffee touch, or Saint Etienne, for having lost their bearings.

Small Glimmers for the New Millennium

Preceded in 1999 by the excellent, obscure EP Places To Visit, which had already signaled a certain shift, Saint Etienne return on the eve of 2000 with Sound Of Water, and it's finally a small step forward for a band so distinguished that it seemed to have inexorably lost its way. This time the recordings take place mainly in Berlin, with help from Stefan Schneider of Kreidler and brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok of To Rococo Rot. The positive results seem to confirm the myth of a city that for decades has drawn countless artists in crisis searching for a turning point. Berlin's urban landscapes, the concrete buildings of the eastern districts, the squats frequented during recording breaks, the cold and snow of the continental winter, all inspire a band that has always carried a considerable dose of synths and samples throughout its work. Berlin, the homeland of electronic music, acts as a minimalist filter, drying out those sugar-sweet melodies and spritzing a little lemon over them.

The production finally sheds some of its sweetness, and those looming keyboard walls that used to choke Cracknell's voice are nowhere to be seen. As they themselves later put it, recording Sounds Of Water was like "working in an oven, under vacuum and with no windows", a spot-on description of its mood.

It can be described as an almost ambient work, rarefied right from such an evocative title and a cover image that evokes the imagery of "German electronica". Cold, dry and minimal, Sounds Of Water reveals strange, unexpected surprises here and there, like "Boy Is Crying", with its finger-snap rhythm that's almost bluesy and a catchy pop refrain that could have come off a Garbage record, or the elegant "Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi)", which pairs an altogether catchy melody with more rarefied arrangements. The lyrics – according to the band's own statements – allude to all the powerful figures who have disappointed or betrayed the feelings of their supporters, with a particular mention for Tony Blair's Labour Party, for which Bob Stanley (who had fervently backed the candidacy a couple of years earlier) had even offered himself as a DJ on the last night of the election campaign. This is Saint Etienne: pop, dance and electronica with real authorial flair, easy on the ear yet always just a touch out of the ordinary. A band that, every single time, forces us to look beyond appearances.

The opening of "Late Morning" seems almost to take inspiration from Enya in the way synthetic strings punctuate its rhythm, but it soon gives way to an electric piano solo, as if it were a William Orbit track. The pure chill-out of "Aspects Of Lambert" gives way to "Downey, CA", a gentle rhythm joined by the crisp, Parisian atmospheres of an accordion. "Sycamore" also works better, built on a Beatles-esque progression of piano and electric harpsichord chords, but handled here with taste and originality, something that was missing on Good Humor.

Even the pop-evocative Sixties strings make a comeback on "Don't Back Down", reworked here in a minimal version, and it's no longer a carefree beach stroll in mid-July, but rather an introverted, early-autumn reflection. Built on a simple acoustic guitar progression, the brief closer "The Place At Dawn" conjures up almost pastoral atmospheres, bolstered by the sparse notes of a clarinet.

The single pulled from the album, "How We Used To Live", runs 9 minutes long and wasn't even released in a radio-friendly edit: it's split into three movements, with the catchiest part placed right in the middle, a rather bold choice from a commercial standpoint.

It takes several listens to truly get to the heart of Sounds Of Water, and headphones are recommended to fully appreciate its extremely refined production work. Times have changed, in short, and Saint Etienne now feel confident enough to release an introverted work that isn't meant for instant assimilation. Personally, I believe much of the credit is due to the breaking down of the barrier between electronic music and the mainstream, something another artist, Moby, had risked just a few months earlier with his "Play". Detractors from that period will say this record sounds a bit flat and sometimes fades into the background without ever really biting (so-called "elevator music"), but Sounds Of Water undoubtedly marks a significant step forward for a band that managed to get back on the crest of the wave, paving the way for Royksopp, Goldfrapp and the whole electronic movement of the new millennium to come.

Finisterre (Fino-in-terra)

2002 saw the return of Saint Etienne with a new studio effort that tries to combine the experimental path taken on the previous Sounds Of Water with once-again more accessible melodies. The foot is pressed harder on the accelerator, techno and electro beats forming a blend usable in any beach-at-sunset DJ set, cocktail (another one) in hand, and remixes arrive in droves. Tracks like "New Thing", "Action", "Shower Scene" and the title track "Finisterre" are a clear example of the direction Saint Etienne are once again veering towards. The more pop ("Stop And Think It's Over") or experimental ("B92", perhaps the best) episodes are a clear minority.

In short, Finisterre drops back down a notch. Certainly better than the last few records before Sounds Of Water, but still on the same commercial, conventional track. What we're left holding is another record that could land plenty of its songs on the latest volume of some Hit Mania Dance compilation. All because the glossy but rather simple production does nothing but undercut melodies that were already a bit too sugary to begin with. Even the idea of slotting film dialogue between songs, as in the golden days of Foxbase Alpha and So Tough, no longer works - if anything it distracts anyone who just wants a straightforward record to dance to at a Saturday-night house party.

And yet Saint Etienne's fans and admirers keep growing: for dance lovers they remain an indestructible pillar, and Finisterre only confirms their worth.

Tales from Islington

Let's spend a couple more words, then, on what is, to date, their second-to-last studio album, Tales From Turnpike House, another ambitious project that Saint Etienne put out in 2005. It's a concept album in the vein of Tiger Bay, this time based on life inside a council housing block in the Islington neighbourhood (east-central London). Islington has recently been voted the London borough with the sharpest social divide in all of England. The eye-watering prices of the pretty brick terraced houses on Georgian- and Victorian-era tree-lined streets stand in stark contrast with the reinforced-concrete blocks built in the '70s and '80s to house less well-off residents. Tony Blair and the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, both live in Islington, in two lovely renovated period townhouses, just a stone's throw from the social decay that, surprisingly, still marks the surrounding streets to this day. Turnpike House sits right in the middle of this battleground, in an area now highly coveted by investors caught up in the frenzy of property speculation. The unstoppable property boom of a metropolis versus an impoverished society dependent on the government's monthly benefit cheque: Islington can be seen today, even more than in 2005, as a thorn in the side of David Cameron's Big Society, and this Tales From Turnpike House had the potential to leave an indelible mark. Saint Etienne, cultured Londoners who have also dabbled, over their career, in independent film, documentaries and journalism, are more than qualified for the project.

On at least a couple of songs they're joined by Xenomania (that is, Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper), a songwriting/production duo behind some of the most in-demand chart pop around the world (rivalling Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas) thanks to their knack for sending whatever they write straight to number one. Sacred monsters of the planet's most commercial pop, in other words, who made the fortune of the hugely famous Girls Aloud (writing their entire albums from scratch), as well as Cher, both Minogue sisters, Sugababes and so on.

But Tales... stays right there, caught between good moments and less good ones, neither praised nor damned. It's saved only by being backed by a fairly noble idea, as was the case with Tiger Bay. There's a notable development in the sound, reaching almost lo-fi atmospheres that don't feel out of place in this context and seem handcrafted and home-recorded, as on Foxbase Alpha. The opening of "Sun In My Morning" seems to want to pick up the thread of "Mario's Cafe" (from So Tough) and adds a little Beach Boys-style choir and flute notes unheard since their earliest days. The more commercial dance episodes "Stars Above Us" and "Lightning Strikes Twice" (not by chance the two credited to Xenomania) are instead rather flat and saccharine, though dressed up nicely by Cracknell's voice. "Teenage Winter", on the other hand, has a fine lyric, almost spoken rather than sung by Cracknell in her strong accent, even if the chorus and arrangements aren't exactly memorable. "A Good Thing" (which Pedro Almodovar would later include on the soundtrack of "Volver") also gets your foot tapping along, maybe picturing yourself behind the wheel of a convertible on the roads of the Costa Brava.

The single "Side Streets" at least offers a small, pleasant-if-harmless jazzy episode, the soundtrack to a late-afternoon cup of coffee. The experimental electric harpsichord sketch "Birdman Of EC1" echoes the best moments of Places To Visit, but here it inevitably feels out of place.

What's really missing is that urban London roar that had made their earliest records so thrilling. A concept like this one had all the makings of a return to clawing with irony and sharpness, the way Saint Etienne had been able to do in the past. But, even though the intelligence of the lyrics outstrips that of most pop bands of the decade, the record's overall outcome is weak, due to a sound that now feels faded and stripped of the brilliant flashes of insight that once made them unique.

"Words And Music By Saint Etienne"

Saint Etienne take a long break, interrupted by a lavish double anthology titled London Conversations (also released in an edition with a bonus DVD featuring almost all their music videos and the previously unreleased track "Method Of Modern Love"). What to expect from their return? Another shift in direction, or a completely out-of-place collaboration with some hot name of the moment? Hard to say, given that Saint Etienne always travel outside the rules.

After all, there's still that statement Bob Stanley made during the Sound Of Water era that remains baffling to this day: "(...) I would have preferred to put in a couple more commercial songs, but at the time we were making a record with no thought for the charts - besides, we knew we couldn't compete with Billie (Piper, ed.) or B*witched". B*witched? The authors of a cult record like Foxbase Alpha feel in competition with a summer-anthem girl band fronted by the sister of one of the Boyzone members? It would be as if Aretha Franklin had turned to trip-hop in the '90s so as not to be compared with Shola Ama...

In 2012 the trio returns to reassure their audience with a new record, Words And Music By Saint Etienne (a title "imposed" on them by their friend Lawrence Hayward, ex-Felt). The reason for the comeback is simple: a sacred love of Music itself, that art form which accompanies us, moves us, entertains us, makes us fall in love and subtly punctuates the course of our lives to the point of becoming part of them. It's no accident, then, that the first single is "Tonight", which tells of that uncontainable feeling of joy and excitement you get while getting ready to go see your favourite artist in concert - a feeling surely familiar to many of us. Saint Etienne, visionaries of the past, have stopped pushing boundaries, choosing instead to look back and reread their own roots with that same elegance that by now has become their trademark.

The record is therefore a summation of their entire body of work, a revisiting that inevitably comes packed with self-celebration, yet remains fresh, graceful and decidedly "humble", as has always been their style.

Another clear example of the nostalgia factor sits right at the opening of the record: the spoken-word piece "Over The Border", in which Sarah recounts the autobiographical stories of her musical memories: it's impossible not to find, among the words of "Over The Border", at least one thread that leads back to our own slice of life, to the records closest to our hearts and the memories tied to them. "Heading For The Fair" too, with its springlike, skittering electric-piano rhythm, looks back in time - more precisely, in their case, to 1998 and the Swedish period of Good Humor - while the nostalgic "When I Was Seventeen" sounds like it was written to be listened to on the deck of a yacht at aperitif hour. And what to say about the frivolous, spirited "Popular", other than that it flaunts a truly textbook chorus? Craftsmen, yes, but of the most refined kind.

There's also no shortage of the usual appointment with "perfect pop", be it Abba or the Beach Boys, to which Saint Etienne pay tribute at the close of the record with the excellent "Haunted Jukebox". The best tracks don't keep you waiting either: first and foremost "Answer Song", a shimmering gust of synths as fresh as summer wind in your face while riding a little 50cc scooter through country roads, closely followed by the gentle "I Threw It All Away", a semi-acoustic, almost-folk delight the likes of which hadn't been heard since Tiger Bay, back in the now very distant 1994. Also very successful is the more introverted "Last Days Of Disco", decidedly more chill-out than disco despite the title, thanks to that impalpable shimmer of electric production, rarefied just the right amount, which makes it a track that wouldn't have been out of place on Sound Of Water. "I've Got Your Music" flows along pleasantly but quite anonymously, while "Dj" takes us back to certain dance episodes of the late '90s/early 2000s (back when you'd go dancing in a Diesel hoodie with grey-and-blue New Balance on your feet). Even the spoken-vocal interlude "Record Doctor" has nothing to do with the thoroughly amusing ones that enlivened So Tough back in 1993.

In short, Saint Etienne carry on doing what Saint Etienne do, looking back with nostalgia and dusting off their (usual) beloved influences, and "Words And Music By Saint Etienne" seems devised specifically to catalogue them all. Nothing new under the sun, but still a long-distance return that proves decidedly more solid than their previous two studio works. The band retains its honorary title as champions of alt-dance, and perhaps it's better to keep them that way, tinkering with their synthesizers safely tucked away in Brian Higgins' studios, rather than hearing them flirt with the trends dominating today's charts, like the painfully tacky Guetta-sound, the incestuous mashups of eurodance and r'n'b, and Skrillex's drops, in which these three ageing Londoners would drown immediately anyway.

In 2015 it's Sarah Cracknell alone who takes the reins. Comfortably recorded in the barn at the bottom of the garden of her home in the Oxfordshire countryside together with Carwyn Ellis (multi-instrumentalist of Colorama), Red Kite (2015) is a record that oozes pastoral tenderness and moorland melancholy, with early-morning mist fading into view, and reverses course toward a return to its roots. While Sarah's solo debut Lipslide, dating back now to the distant 1997, played with the same techno-pop so beloved by her bandmates Wiggs & Stanley (those were the years of "He's On The Phone" and her collaborations with Etienne Daho), Red Kite performs a delightful backward somersault, toward the acoustic melodies of auteur indie-pop and certain sixties atmospheres that shun any hint of electronics.

Nothing new, then, but it's impossible to remain unmoved as the sweet harmonies supported by the guitar mélange of "Nothing Left To Talk About" go by, embellished by a curious second-vocal cameo from Nicky Wire, usually the bassist of Manic Street Preachers. Hints of baroque-pop ("In The Dark"), bittersweet little carousels ("Hearts Are For Breaking", "It's Never Too Late"), shadowy melancholy under a string line ("The Mutineer"), a cinematic spy movie moment with crackling electric guitar ("I'm Not Your Enemy"), touches of chanson ("I Close My Eyes"), simply superb harmonies ("Take The Silver"), and a lullaby sketched out at the close ("Favourite Chair"), round out a picture that could win over even Belle And Sebastian fans left disappointed by the band's recent electro turn.

Red Kite is undoubtedly a niche record, aimed at genre devotees, at those nostalgic for the Sixties, and at followers of the Heavenly/Cherry Red/Sarah Records circle and its offshoots. But the songwriting, the care taken with the lyrics and the arrangements make it an album that, without any fanfare, will surely stay in the hearts of its more sensitive listeners for a long time. They say class is forever; Sarah Cracknell still has plenty of it to spare.

2017: Brexit & co.

Everyone knows it by now: in June 2016 the British people expressed their wish to leave the European Union. An unprecedented situation, one that is inevitably upending the entire balance of the Old Continent. The negotiations haven't even begun yet, but the past year of British domestic politics has already been one endless squabble over the economic and institutional future of a Kingdom that, who knows, might soon cease to exist altogether. After all, the social and cultural divisions within the island have never before been laid bare so starkly, exacerbated on one side by crude nationalism and on the other by the horrified outcry of the middle class. The crux of the matter appears, mirror-like, above all in the case of London versus the rest of the nation; the capital's metropolitan bubble has always moved at the speed of light, with its ruthless economic contrasts and vast multicultural riches, but in its relentless - and, it must be said, somewhat self-absorbed - progress, it failed to pick up on the feelings of the rest of the country, and the referendum result came as a shock.

How can one restore perspective to a proudly British sense of belonging without, in doing so, being lumped together with the crude populism of certain masses or the backstabbing the Tories keep carrying out in the run-up to the national referendum on June 8th?

There's obviously no single answer, but Saint Etienne's voice seems to arrive at just the right moment, as if they hadn't even planned it. Alongside people like Jarvis Cocker and Lawrence Hayward, Etienne have always embodied the quintessence of a pure British soul, celebrated in their projects through the most obscure cultural references (have you ever taken a look at the meticulous archival work Bob Stanley has carried out through Croydon Municipal?), yet they are also fervent London urbanites with their eyes turned to the rest of the world - already musically in Europe in the early Nineties with Tiger Bay, and later in Sweden with Johansson and in Berlin with the Lippock brothers, just to name a couple of examples. And it's precisely through this cultural ambivalence that Saint Etienne now celebrate an imaginary bridge between the English capital and the 11 surrounding provincial counties, the so-called home counties that give their ninth studio album its title.

One really couldn't be more British than this: magpies of everything and masters of reinterpretation; you dance to the rhythm of Cool Britannia and the Swinging Sixties ("Magpie Eyes" and "Underneath The Apple Tree"), but also to delightful disco-funk via the restless bassline of "Dive", and above all there's a gem of a song like "Take It All In", which wavers between the soundtrack of a 70s film in the style of "Amici Miei" and strings brought to the fore, lifted straight from old-school Philly soul (but remember Lenny Kravitz's "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over" too?). There's also pure, sparkling pop-rock in "Out Of My Mind", and indie shades reminiscent of Belle And Sebastian in the charming sweetness of "Unopened Fan Mail" and "Something New", while "Heather" fits snugly over a nostalgic yet vaguely unsettling synth bed. And when the atmosphere turns heavy and opinions run too hot, descending into idle chatter, everyone flees toward the south of Spain on the notes of "What Kind Of World", a warm lounge-pop track placed there to let us escape from everyday troubles.

The shifting, elegant melodicism typical of their style is, in short, once again put to the service of a concept album that remains exquisite to the ear, yet structured across multiple levels of understanding depending on how closely one pays attention to the lyrics - how else would you describe a song about union meetings, employers, feminism and equality like "Train Drivers In Eyeliner"?

But Bob, Pete & Sarah also manage to recreate watercolour sketches of folk-pop streaked with a thoroughly electro sensibility; first with the baroque introduction of "Whyteleafe" (the name of a village in Surrey) and the bare-bones vignette of "After Hebden" (a borderland spot between east London and Essex), and then with an effective closing finale: the over seven minutes of "Sweet Arcadia", a spoken-word piece that soon turns into an ambient moorland landscape shortly before sunrise, when the glow of light hasn't yet cleared the mist, and the mysterious instrumental "Angel Of Woodhatch", which closes the record on a dreamlike note.

Compared to the flight into the past of the previous Words And Music, Home Counties all but completes a kind of trilogy in Etienne's career alongside the urbanism of Finisterre and the neighbourhood stories of Tales From Turnpike House, but it does so with a newfound melodic grace and the ability to never slip into rhetoric - essential in this respect, once again, are the various interludes dotted throughout the record, from the radio introduction of "The Reunion" to the evocative industrial-folk moment of "Breakneck Hill".

So what does it mean, then, to feel English at such an uncertain and delicate moment for their future and ours? Saint Etienne - eternal masters of calm and passion - answer us with innate savoir faire and a touch of sweet eccentricity, as if to remind us that, despite all the shouting, the crusades and the ugliness of recent times, Albion isn't only home to the wicked.

Suburban Ambient Landscapes

Four years later comes I've Been Trying To Tell You (2021). This time, the encyclopaedic musical knowledge of DJ duo Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, accompanied by Sarah Cracknell's unmistakable voice, is focused on the late Nineties. Saint Etienne take their cue from tiny samples of songs by artists of that period (Lighthouse Family, Honeyz, Tasmin Archer, to name a few) and then rework them into new forms, sometimes adding instrumentation or stripping the original tracks down until they become a distant memory. The result is an almost dreamlike concept album: like those fragmented, intangible dreams upon waking, which evoke something already experienced yet tell us something current, Saint Etienne's music recalls familiar melodies while transforming them and pointing toward new horizons.

Emblematic in this sense is the album's lead single, "Pond House", a synth-pop number containing a sample of Natalie Imbruglia's "Beauty On The Fire" (2001): compared to the original version, the melody initially seems identical, but then it gets sucked into a circular vortex created by a hypnotic bassline.

The choice to place the catchy title track between the album's two least accessible songs also pays off: the long, ethereal "Music Again" and the excellent "Fonteyn", which recalls the contemporaneous English trip-hop of Massive Attack. "Little K" is a song steeped in sweetness, with a dreamy atmosphere that echoes certain settings of Sigur Ros, counterbalanced by the following, more anguished "Blu Kite", with its ambient tones.

The three closing tracks are perhaps the most interesting on the album and among the best in the band's output. "I Remember It Well" has no lyrics; the title evokes a distant past, still vivid in memory but now left behind; the sound, however, buoyed by guitars and an enveloping choir, seems to pull the listener toward a radiant future. It wouldn't be hard to picture it as a film soundtrack, placed at the point where the drama has finally been resolved and the protagonists are ready to face, with confidence, whatever life has in store for them. It was instead the following "Penlop" that was actually chosen as a soundtrack, accompanying a film by Alasdair McLellan, from which some excerpts were also used in the song's video: it opens subdued, but when Sarah Cracknell's ever-sinuous, refined voice breaks in, the music too turns more vivid and luminous, without losing a melancholic, dreamy aftertaste.

The album closes with "Broad River", which stretches out placidly for just over five minutes before once again being cradled by Cracknell's voice, which whispers a few lines, almost like a prayer ("A love like this, a love like this again. Again"), well suited to the circular motion that characterizes almost every song on the album and that seems to be telling us we need to listen to them all again, over and over.

I've Been Trying To Tell You is thus a successful, cohesive album. The vocal parts are kept to a minimum, while the instrumental ones, by contrast, prove even more layered, revealing, listen after listen, a wealth of technical refinements in their construction. In this respect, the English trio puts to use their almost artisanal skill in skillfully blending different styles and genres to deliver tracks with a strong sonic identity. It's an album that can be enjoyed as background music just as well as with close attention, but it requires the listener's willingness to immerse themselves in their sound and let it carry them away completely; it doesn't reach the stylistic heights of some earlier masterpieces, but it represents a further evolution in the London group's style. Making music of this caliber is never trivial; managing to keep reinventing yourself after three decades of activity is truly rare.

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