Saint Etienne

There are musicians indelibly tied to the place they come from. Speaking of London, one could name (among countless others) the Sex Pistols and Clash, who set the city ablaze with the punk revolution of the 70s, the Pet Shop Boys who haunted the clubs of Kings Road in the early 80s, the colourful new romantic crowd of the Blitz in Leicester Square, or Brett Anderson's Suede, pioneers of the Britpop saga of the Nineties. We might as well throw in the late Amy Winehouse, who from the pubs of Camden Town launched a fine revival of 60s R&B and old-school jazz that found plenty of imitators among female Anglo-Saxon pop acts. In the Nineties, though, there was another band, a little less well-known, less flashy in image and certainly less consistent in style, who did for London what almost no one else has ever managed to do: capture that strange, unique, magnetic energy you breathe in its streets, its squares, its parks and its Underground, and put it on record. That band is Saint Etienne, and the record is their debut, "Foxbase Alpha".

The point is that a city like London creates and destroys at least three trends a month; good old Sex Pistols punk is now only good for selling T-shirts at TopShop, and if it still exists at all, it's only because someone adopted it and keeps spreading the gospel. The Pet Shop Boys recently said they prefer Berlin because it's "far more avant-garde", while Kings Road today is a wasteland populated by Hugh Grant, Starbucks and some of the most expensive (and pointless) vintage-styled boutiques in the world. Which is exactly why it makes sense to talk about "Foxbase Alpha". This record, with its mysterious cover, was never really part of any passing fad, and yet it still holds up today under the most critical listen, resisting the city and its trends, and perhaps one day it will even serve as its epitaph, should one ever be needed. Because "Foxbase Alpha" is London; as if Saint Etienne had left the studio windows open during the recording sessions and the city, with its sounds and the urban harmonies of the millions of people living in it, had slipped into the tapes and between the microphones, forever trapped there, a witness to the passing of time.

The British press labelled them indie-dance. Others, more simply, slapped the vague tag crossover on them for lack of a better word. Radio stations in 1991 couldn't quite decide whether to slot them into the Friday night dance show or play them everywhere, since there wasn't really much to dance to. Critics called them amateurish, since that slightly homemade sound clearly didn't sit well next to the glossier stuff playing in the capital's trendy clubs. It sounded like house, but it was already something else. Pop, perhaps? Sure, there are nods to a certain Sixties aesthetic - including a well-known sample borrowed from the queen of white soul, Dusty Springfield - as well as a melodic streak close to the synthetic sound of the 80s and the indie-pop of the Sarah Records school, but everything is wonderfully transfigured. Trip-hop? After all, 1991 is also the year of Massive Attack's "Blue Lines", though there's only a hint of the Bristol sound here. Nor do those snippets of arthouse film, spliced in as bridges between tracks, or that wholesale recycling of the most varied sound sources remixed into a collage, do much to pin down an identity.

So they're hard to define. And pointless to try, too, since there seem to be genuinely few markers of London iconography here. No Union Jacks to wave around, unlike other British bands. And then there's that name, Saint Etienne, borrowed not so much from the French city as from the football club of the same name, a side with a glorious past that once included Michel Platini among its players. Even the album's own intro, "This Is Radio Etienne", is nothing but a snippet of a French football radio broadcast, as if to underline a lack of geographical belonging and momentarily trick anyone who bought the CD into thinking they were facing yet another incarnation of French touch à la Air. The cover art does nothing to dispel the confusion either, featuring an unknown woman named Celina Nash, with the band relegated to a small box on the back of the CD. The group's image, in fact, rests on singer Sarah Cracknell, a refined English lady with porcelain skin and a velvet voice who serves as frontwoman and usually appears in the videos, while the other two members (Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs) risk going unnoticed even after a Google Images search.

In short, Saint Etienne aren't trying to win anyone over with cheap tricks. Listening on, in fact, you discover that the actual opening track, the one released as a single, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", doesn't even bear their signature. It's a cover of a Neil Young classic (originally found on "After The Gold Rush"), and it's not sung by Sarah Cracknell but by Moira Lambert, voice of indie-pop band Faith Over Reason. And yet the public falls for it at first listen: the waltz time of the original is here translated into 4/4, and in the chorus the chords are all switched to minor, so Moira Lambert's crystalline voice sounds melancholic and underscores the lyrics, while a booming bass/drum section, mixed with keyboards, carries the song forward a couple of decades. If the point of a cover is to pay homage to the author by making the song your own without betraying its context, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" is close to perfect. Retro and cool at the same time, just as befits a classic. The following track, "Wilson", is a genuine sonic anti-climax, a minimalist non-song built on a very brief Wilson Pickett sample sent into a loop, over which a grandmother's voice asks her grandson, "Would you like some sweets, Willy? Would you like some sweets, Willy? What would you like?". Interpret that however you like...

But it's with "Carnt Sleep" (spelled just like that, with the "r" in the middle) that we truly get to the heart of "Foxbase Alpha": the melody is lifted from a multi-purpose Jamaican dub riddim, and it keeps its faintly melancholic spirit intact. Cracknell's voice, though, carries us from the sun-baked beaches of the Caribbean to the long shadows cast by tower blocks at sunset over Victoria Park, East London. This is where their real talent lies: Saint Etienne (DJs and producers more than musicians) gather up whatever they pick up living the city day to day, then blend the various influences together in the blender without overthinking it, forging a brand new London sound and tearing down every barrier, social and racial alike. Like a street party where everyone - white, black, Asian, Latin - comes together, recognising each other first and foremost as Londoners.

Accompanied by flutes, "Girl VII" is an imaginary atlas stretching between London and various exotic locales, another example of sinuous, dreamy electronic pop. "Spring", with its warm funky tones and dreamy atmospheres, is a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds hanging over the city. By contrast, "Stoned To Say The Least" is the city's flipside: a long instrumental drone, far more introspective and darker in tone, à-la Massive Attack. Like a Sunday evening urban stroll through deserted building sites on the outskirts of town.

The second single lifted from the album, "Nothing Can Stop Us Now", is the track that most closely apes the sun-drenched, nostalgic 60s sound of something like "Scandalo al sole", brandishing the famous sample of a Dusty Springfield track. 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 deeply sweet ballad, embellished with classically-styled harpsichord and flute arrangements, yet shot through with powerful electronic cascades. As the title suggests, it's a love letter to the city on a sunny day. Providing the counterpoint is the new, mysterious drone of "Like The Swallow", which sounds as though it was recorded in the middle of rush-hour traffic: it opens and closes only around the halfway mark, buoyed by a drum crescendo, with Cracknell's crystalline voice intoning a brief, Morricone-esque soundtrack melody, punctuated by a bell: the noise swallows it up again at the close, alongside 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.

It remains an essential archive of sounds and songs for understanding the shift from the decade of synth-pop to that of house, trip-hop, chill-out and britpop. And maybe next time you're in London, skip the all-too-obvious Camden Town market on some vague wave of punk-and-rocker nostalgia, and instead stay on the Northern line for a couple more stops, all the way to Tufnell Park (Saint Etienne's old "base"), and then, with "Foxbase Alpha" in your headphones, start wandering the streets, get a little lost without a map in hand, and you'll discover a new side of a city that has far more to say than nostalgia t-shirts and student posters.

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16/10/2011