In the April 1993 issue of Select (a key text in the run-up to Britpop) the first band interviewed in its famous \u2018Yanks Go Home\u2019 feature wasn\u2019t its cover stars, Suede. It was Saint Etienne, a trio named after a French football team.<\/p>\n
In the piece, they answer some questions about Britishness. Bob Stanley on British pop: \u201cI prefer France, myself\u201d. Pete Wiggs on patriotism: \u201c[it] has been confused with nationalism, racism and xenophobia, which are not OK\u201d. On the same subject, Sarah Cracknell quotes British nurse Edith Cavell who helped both Allied and German soldiers, before being executed in 1915: \u201cPatriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a summer that\u2019s seen the St. George\u2019s Cross hung on lampposts and painted on roundabouts around England in a campaign of weaponised nationalism, it\u2019s good to remember the attitude and approach of Britpop\u2019s best foundational band. From day one \u2013 in the post-perestroika summer of Italia 90 \u2013 their approach to music, lyrics, and films has always crossed borders, been open-minded, and kept time-travelling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like magpies, they\u2019ve made new out of artefacts with which they grew up (decimalisation records, lines from obscure British films, quips from TV quiz shows) and the culture that surrounded them as they grew older (funky drummer samples, Berlin techno, quotes from European modernist architects). Right through to recent concept albums like 2021\u2019s I\u2019ve Been Trying To Tell You (warping lesser-known later 90s pop and R&B) and 2024\u2019s The Night (full of cinematic, ambient after-hours meditations), they\u2019ve mined so many aural possibilities of both reflection and rapture.<\/p>\n
In early summer, they announced that their final album, International, would be released at the end of it. After that, the group would disband after 35 years (Stanley and Wiggs have done the whole stretch; Cracknell joined for their third single, in early 1991, and never left). Their 13th LP brings the group\u2019s story full circle, featuring samples at the start of each song, like on their 1991 debut, Foxbase Alpha (references to Pete Wiggs talking to Katie Puckrik about Mothra, worse for wear, on the first TV footage of Glastonbury in 1994, and catalogue numbers of Delia Derbyshire records, particularly stand out).\u00a0<\/p>\n
International also features big-name co-writes with Vince Clarke, The Chemical Brothers\u2019 Tom Rowlands, and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, duets with Nick Heyward and Confidence Man\u2019s Janet Planet, while Xenomania\u2019s Tim Powell, who produced 2012\u2019s gorgeous Words And Music\u2026, delivers its glossy, punchy sound. \u201cBecause we knew this was going to be the last, we wanted to go out with a bang,\u201d Cracknell says.<\/p>\n
She joins Stanley and Wiggs in a square on my Zoom screen as we attempt to sum up their strange world in 10 artefacts (not just songs: two films also squeeze in). We\u2019re now at a point where their kids are into the 90s: Wiggs\u2019 son adores \u2018Yanks Go Home\u2019 cover stars Suede, while Cracknell\u2019s boys have been known to go out wearing Saint Etienne t-shirts. \u201cAnd I have done that very slightly showing off thing where I go, \u2018Yeah, well, I have met Kylie Minogue, you know!\u201d (Minogue covered \u2018Nothing Can Stop Us Now\u2019 for the B-side to her 1994 smash hit, \u2018Confide In Me\u2019).<\/p>\n
The band agrees this is the right time to stop. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing that we\u2019ve put out ever that I\u2019m not proud of\u201d, says Cracknell, although Wiggs adds, \u201cwe\u2019ll still do some live stuff after September. So it\u2019s a soft exit. Or is that a soft opening?\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll need to see a doctor about that,\u201d replies Stanley.<\/p>\n
After the laughs have died down, he adds that right from the beginning, Saint Etienne hasn\u2019t been just about the songs, but \u201cas much about the artwork and having sleeve notes and creating\u201d \u2013 about building the worlds around them. Here are 10 entry points into their long-lasting, colourful canon.<\/p>\n
\u2018Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)\u2019 \u2013 Andrew Weatherall remix, 12\u201d (1990)<\/strong><\/p>\n Bob Stanley: Pete and I were friends with [Sarah Records band] The Field Mice, who made all their records in Ian Catt\u2019s studio, which was his old bedroom in Mitcham, South London.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pete Wiggs: We just went in there with him, thinking we had an idea. A cassette to give out at gigs was our fantasy.<\/p>\n BS: We were listening to a lot of Neil Young. Initially we thought of doing something with \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019 off On The Beach, which would have been quite different! Plus Psychic TV, of all people, did a version [in 1989] which was quite cyclical, so we thought that\u2019d probably be a lot easier, plus Moira [Lambert], who sings on it, knew it already, and we literally had about an hour and a half in which to do it. Andrew Weatherall we knew already from clubs \u2013 he was so funny, and a great DJ then, but barely doing mixes. I think this was\u00a0 the second or third thing he\u2019d done, and it came out sounding fantastic. Back then, we took that sort of thing for granted.<\/p>\n \u2018Filthy\u2019, featuring Q-Tee \u2013\u00a012\u201d (1991)<\/strong><\/p>\n PW: There was a record called \u2018Afrika\u2019 by a group called History which had Q-Tee on it, and we just loved her voice\u00a0\u2013 and at that time, rapping with a London accent was kind of relatively rare.<\/p>\n BS: It was a naturally husky voice. It wasn\u2019t put on. It\u2019s such a shame that she never had a real career of her own, because she was fantastic.<\/p>\n Sarah Cracknell: You must say about how you had to go and meet her mum\u2026<\/p>\n PW: Yes!<\/p>\n BS: She was only 15, 16. We had to meet her mum in her council flat in Kidbrooke.<\/p>\n SC: \u2018There are these two old guys, um, and they want me to sing this song, \u2018Filthy\u2019. Is that OK?\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n BS: Then her brother came with her to Mitcham her with a couple of mates, thinking it\u2019d be a fancy recording studio, not a bedroom in someone\u2019s house, so they brought some chips in. Ian was silently fuming about the stink of chips in his bedroom for days.\u00a0<\/p>\n PW: She\u2019s in some sort of high-powered job now, Q-Tee. She came to the 20th anniversary gig of Foxbase Alpha at Heaven and did \u2018Filthy\u2019 with us.\u00a0<\/p>\n SC: She was brilliant.<\/p>\n \u2018Nothing Can Stop Us\u2019 from Foxbase Alpha (1991)<\/strong><\/p>\n SC: I\u2019d heard \u2018Only Love Can Break Your Heart\u2019 and \u2018Kiss And Make Up\u2019 [the band\u2019s first two singles], and really liked what Bob and Pete were doing. Their reference points were similar to things that I liked, so I was trying not to get too excited when they got me in, initially, just to do this song. Then you got me to do [Foxbase Alpha album track] \u2018Carnt Sleep\u2019, if my memory serves me right. Then we just drifted into being!<\/p>\n How did the Dusty Springfield sample come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n BS: We were literally pulling up outside Ian\u2019s flat when the Dusty Springfield song came on, and we were like, oh, that\u2019d be good. We were literally using it one minute after hearing it. It was such an exciting time, with a lot of hip hop around, and we loved De La Soul, who were using samples from all over the place. They were really inspirational and legitimised what we wanted to do.<\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019re In Bad Way\u2019,\u00a0 7\u201d single version (1993)<\/strong><\/p>\n BS: I remember this being written really quickly \u2013 we just thought of it being a B-side that we didn\u2019t really spend much time on. If we\u2019d spent a bit more time on it, we might have made it slightly less comical, and it might not have been a hit. [It reached number 12, the band\u2019s second biggest behind 1995\u2019s \u2018He\u2019s On The Phone\u2019, which got to no. 11].<\/p>\n PW: I remember playing it at Glastonbury, which was televised for the first time, the following summer. That was really good fun, but there was a lot of stress on that day about whether we were going to get there on time.<\/p>\n SC: I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had such an euphoric feeling when we finally got on stage \u2013 every time we got to a gate, they were racing us through. To then walk out and see 30,000 people all there\u2026 I don\u2019t think I could ever recreate what my body was feeling. It was unbelievable.<\/p>\n \u2018Like A Motorway\u2019 from Tiger Bay (1994)<\/strong><\/p>\n BS: For Tiger Bay, Pete and I went away to the Forest Of Dean for a couple of weeks with a pile of folk records for a lyric-writing retreat. We thought we\u2019d picked this obscure place, but when we got there, there was a visitor\u2019s book, and the last person who\u2019d stayed there was Bill Drummond.\u00a0<\/p>\n PW: I used to be scared of folk music. Terrified. I blame [Steeleye Span\u2019s] \u2018Gaudete\u2019 every Christmas.<\/p>\n BS: I wanted to create the atmosphere of those late 60s, early 70s, British folk rock records, but mix them with techno production. With \u2018Like A Motorway\u2019, I remember someone at the NME going, hang on a minute, you\u2019ve pinched this melody from Joan Baez! And me going, well, she did the famous recording, but it\u2019s traditional [\u2018Like A Motorway\u2019\u2019s melody is from the English ballad, \u2018Silver Dagger\u2019].\u00a0<\/p>\n SC: As soon as I saw the lyrics to this, I knew it was a Pete song. He tends to write slightly sinister, bleak, descriptive lyrics that might involve a death here or there!<\/p>\n \u2018Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi)\u2019 from Sound Of Water (2000)<\/strong><\/p>\n BS: We\u2019d made an album in Sweden [1997\u2019s Good Humor], then one in Germany [2000\u2019s Sound Of Water], for reasons that were largely down to not wanting to be flag-waving. We\u2019d also got to a point where we didn\u2019t have to work at home anymore, and we could work with people whose production sounds we liked, so we did this with To Rococo Rot, who are absolutely lovely and really talented, in an old piano factory in East Berlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n SC: This is one of my favourites.<\/p>\n BS: There\u2019s a lyric in this about this football chairman who has been weirdly forgotten, who was trying to merge QPR and Fulham \u2013 I can\u2019t remember his name, but it was a very big story around the same time Robert Maxwell was trying to merge Oxford and Reading [it was David Bulstrode, who died in September 1988<\/a>]. Like Maxwell, he just dropped dead of a heart attack. Football in the old days \u2013 so that\u2019s about him!<\/p>\n Finisterre,(dir. Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans, 2003)<\/strong><\/p>\n SC: The idea to actually make a film came from seeing the size of video budgets, and going, \u2018bloody hell, we could make a film for that\u2019.<\/p>\n BS: So we said to our label at the time, Mantra, could we make a film with Paul Kelly, who\u2019d made videos for \u2018Avenue\u2019 and \u2018You\u2019re In A Bad Way\u2019? And they said yes. And of course, Pete\u2019s a proper film buff\u2026<\/p>\n PW: It was good fun, wasn\u2019t it? Going along to watch Paul Kelly doing scenes, and coming up with ideas for shots of London. It was so exciting.<\/p>\n BS: And Sarah knows cinema so well [her father, Derek, who died of cancer a few months before Foxbase Alpha\u2019s release, was assistant director on Stanley Kubrick\u2019s\u00a02001: A Space Odyssey,\u00a0A Clockwork Orange, and several Bond films].<\/p>\n SC: The whole idea of it, of being on film sets and watching films being made\u2026 sorry, I\u2019m getting a bit emotional. It was something deep inside me, because I remembered it from my upbringing.<\/p>\n \u2018Snowbound On The South Bank\u2019 from A Glimpse Of Stocking (2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n SC: It\u2019s Christmas, innit. Christmas is the best.<\/p>\n BS: Obviously, I like Christmas because someone always cooks me a nice dinner on my birthday [which is 25 December].<\/p>\n PW: We\u2019ve always loved making music that evoked that excitement you got as a kid when the Radio Times came out, from [1993 single] \u2018I Was Born On Christmas Day\u2019 onwards.<\/p>\n BS: Once the advent calendars are out, I\u2019m gone for the month!<\/p>\n Why do you have so many songs referencing 20th century architecture and art?<\/strong><\/p>\n The massive transformations, especially after World War One, when people thought, well, we\u2019ve got to find a better way to live \u2013 I find that very inspirational. When people started making these amazing things that had no kind of connection, or very little connection, to the past, after some terrible cataclysm\u2026 it\u2019s very hard to get your head around that today, when you think everything\u2019s already been done, especially in the terrible times we\u2019re living through. But it was possible then, so it\u2019s possible now.<\/p>\n