SAINT ETIENNE
Inter Stellar
After 35 years and a string of modernist masterpieces, Saint Etienne are signing off in style with their star-studded final album,International. “It was definitely emotional,” Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs tellClassic Pop.
PAUL KIRKLEY
Saint Etienne, featuring Bob Stanley, Sarah Cracknell and Pete Wiggs, will release their last LP, International (pictured below left), on 5 September
Saint Etienne can’t remember exactly when – or indeed why – they decided that their new album would be their last. “We must have felt it was in the air,” says Bob Stanley, who founded the modernist dance-pop stylists with his best friend Pete Wiggs in 1990. “I’ve got a feeling I floated the idea. It just felt natural.
It would be nice to say it was always our plan to do 13 albums in 35 years, but it didn’t quite happen like that.”
“It just seemed like the right time,” agrees Sarah Cracknell, the face and voice of the band for these past three-and-a-half decades. “I think we felt we’d done everything we wanted to do, and I didn’t want to keep going for the sake of it. Not that we would ever do that.”
“We really need to come up with a good answer for this, don’t we?” suggests Pete, the third and final member of the group to fail to offer a compelling reason why the world should be denied further Saint Etienne records.
But hey. We are where we are. And to sweeten the pill,
Classic Pop
has two pieces of good news to impart. The first is that this isn’t really the end of Saint Etienne at all. “We’re not going to stop working together,” Bob assures us. “We’re still really good friends, and if someone said ‘do you want a do a film soundtrack?’ next week, we’d probably say yes. It just felt that it was the last time we should do an album that’s an
album
, with all the trimmings that go with it.”
The second bit of good news is that said album,
International
, is a career-capping triumph that sees the Saints go marching out with their heads held high, assisted by a stellar cast of guest contributors.
The Girl On A Motorcycle: Saint Etienne led the way in 53 classy 90s pop
© Joe Dilworth
London Conversation
London – and the idea of London – is a theme that runs through Saint Etienne’s work like a Thames-wide watermark.
From the musical gazetteer of Foxbase Alpha’s Primrose Hill, Arnos Grove and Portobello-namechecking Girl VII to their 2005 concept album Tales From Turnpike