Saint Etienne are on the promotional trail. With a single, Glad, co-produced by half of The Chemical Brothers and a ‘final’ album out in September, the band have recently chatted with The Guardian to shed more light on their self-imposed demise.
And they've got good news for anyone who’s currently struggling past page two of their Tune A Day book.
The band’s Bob Stanley has a refreshing perspective on whether a musician needs to be able to play anything anyway.
Describing his inability to play an instrument as “an asset”, he suggests that if he could play Chopin his instinctive pop skills may actually have been dampened. Telling the story of composer and orchestrator David Whitaker offering him piano lessons, Stanley says: “Lovely bloke, but I was like, I really actually think I don’t want to learn… Nobody ever asks Pet Shop Boys if they can play the piano,” he reasons.
And it seems that the central crux of this being their last album (Saint Etienne love a ‘concept’) was another brainchild of Stanley too, being the man who frequently devises what their next off-the-wall indie/pop/dance head scratcher will be about when he’s not authoring hugely respected pop tomes.
“I didn’t think I was saying anything uncomfortable or shocking,” he explains. “When you’ve known each other for so long you have a psychic thing anyway. It felt like we would all agree.” “Once I got used to it, I thought it was a great idea,” agrees bandmate Pete Wiggs. “We’ve not split up acrimoniously, and have some control over it,” he clarifies.
That album – International, out in September – sees the band collaborating with Nick Heyward, Xenomania, Erol Alkan and the Chemical Brothers across its 12 tracks – being an album of bangers after the pair of more sombre, ambient, and early-career inspired experiments I’ve Been Trying to Tell You and The Night. “I wanted to finish our album journey on a high,” says Cracknell. “Do something really special and stop in our prime.”
(Fan fact ahoy: The band are officially disappointed that no one worked out that I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’s track names were all horses that won on the day of Labour’s 1997 landslide. Shame on you.)
"The 1960s, dance music and melancholy"
Casting even further back, the band ponders what got them together. “I liked that she didn’t sing with an American accent which, then, was unusual.” says Stanley of his first impressions of Cracknell. Meanwhile, “They had the 1960s, dance music and melancholy,” she offers in return.
And while their soon-to-be-over career has been successfully etched into 13 albums of solid gold it hasn’t been without its mishaps. The band, for example, turned down the chance to record a demo by Brian Higgins the man who mixed their He’s On The Phone hit from 1995. Higgins would go on to found production house Xenomania and create countless classics all across the noughties, and that track they turned down? That became Believe by Cher. If the band had taken it on board, “We’d probably be living in solid gold houses now,” muses Stanley.
And was it emotional, recording International, knowing that it would be the band’s last. Not so, says Stanley “because we’re English,” but Cracknell disagrees. Singing their final song – The Last Time – written as a farewell both to each other and their loyal audience “I found it very difficult to get through singing it without crying,” she says “It was the last song we recorded for the album, and the realisation really hit me.”
International by Saint Etienne will be released by Heavenly Recordings in September.
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