81SAINT ETIENNEWITH THEIR MELANCHOLY DISCO SINGLES
AND ALBUM STATEMENTS, SAINT ETIENNE WERE
ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED BANDS OF
THE 90S. NOW THEY’RE BACK WITH THEIR NINTH
ALBUM, HOME COUNTIES. CLASSIC POP ASKS
IF IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN THEIR CLUB.
PAUL LESTERith their mash-up of Swinging Sixties
imagery and melodies with modern
technology and electronic beats,
Saint Etienne – Bob Stanley, Pete
Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell – were
an emblematic 90s outfi t. In a way,
they kickstarted that decade with their 1990 debut single,
a dubby, housed-up version of Neil Young’s Only Love
Can Break Your Heart that caught the baggy, rave-era
mood of “aciid”-tinged euphoria.
It was a time of anything-goes mixing and matching: in
Manchester, The Stone Roses were busy allying Byrdsian
bliss-pop with danceable grooves and Happy Mondays
were turning scuffed indie and funk into one scabrous
cocktail while down south Primal Scream were proving
that you could incorporate elements of krautrock, The
Beach Boys, country and Lee “Scratch” Perry, often
within a single song.
Saint Etienne were avatars of this “record collection
rock”, evincing a dizzying array of infl uences. But
although Stanley might joke that, like the militant quasi-
anthem by Denim – the early-90s neo-bubblegum outfi t
fronted by Lawrence (Hayward), formerly of Creation
indie rockers Felt – he was “against the 80s”, Saint
Etienne didn’t dismiss the era out of hand. For starters,
ABC’s state-of-the-art Northern soul and Brill Building-
infl ected post-disco was an obvious precursor, and he
and Wiggs would regularly namecheck Orchestral
Manoeuvres In The Dark’s Dazzle Ships as a key releasein their idiosyncratic personal pantheon. They also
acknowledged Pet Shop Boys as pioneers of their kind of
emotionally engaging, melancholy dancefl oor entreaties.
Of course, they would never have worked as a synth
duo like PSBs, Yazoo or Blancmange because neither of
them could sing. Luckily, these avowed non-musicians with
more ideas than instrumental prowess had as their secret
weapon the divine Ms Cracknell, whose breathy voice
alluded to all manner of 60s French pop and girl groups
and gave Saint Etienne that extra dimension.
These backroom boys with their latterday Julie Christie
(Cracknell’s actress mother had been a pretty, blonde
mainstay of 60s British TV) on the mic were somehow,
simultaneously, lo-fi London-philes (their earliest recordings
were done in producer Ian Catt’s bedroom studio in
Pollards Hill, near Mitcham) and Euro-glamorous, with a
hi-tech sheen. They had one foot in mid-80s “cutie”/C86
indie culture (indeed, Croydon boys Stanley and Wiggs
had their own fanzine, Caff) but they also loved Chicago
house and Detroit techno.AN INTOXICATING MELANGE
Their genius was to bring all of these disparate elements
together. On their 1991 debut album Foxbase Alpha and
attendant singles Kiss And Make Up and Nothing Can
Stop Us, they were equal parts Screamadelica and Sarah
Records: imagine The Field Mice in Ibiza, undercut by a
fi n-de-siecle sadness.
“One of the things that inspired me was when81© Rob Baker AshtonSarah Cracknell –
providing breathy
vocals to Saint
Etienne since 1991CP30.Feat_StEtienne.print.indd 81 07/06/2017 16:54