35 Years Of Saint Etienne: Appreciation and Fond Farewell (Pt 3)

In the third and final part of the Saint Etienne special extended feature, the band’s most recent releases are touched upon as well as some concluding thoughts and reflections on how much of a lasting impact their music has had on their legions of adoring fans over the past 35 years.

When Saint Etienne sang about  ‘joining their club’ in spring 1991, few people at the time would ever have imagined that the club in question would become a lifelong global community of lovers united – most of whom have stayed true and loyal to the band and have all grown older along with them, seeing how their own lives have been mirrored, shaped and soundtracked by the glorious procession of singles, albums, compilations, and everything else that they have been graced with.

Despite the often difficult times we have seen, especially in this decade the 2020s, perhaps the single most challenging time to be alive, theirs is the music to which we have all unconditionally sought sanctuary, solace and comfort, as well as a collective sense of community that is without question one of the most important aspects of any band’s fanbase.  There have been countless times – concerts and festivals mostly – where that sense of bonhomie and camaraderie has been at its most joyous and all-embracing. When you have something that special, it’s almost like having a second family on which you can put your trust and faith into.

Over the years, it’s clear that for some, lasting friendships have been forged from chance encounters with fellow fans at innumerable Saint Etienne shows. I would also be the first to admit that my life was also changed when I first ventured backstage after a couple of shows and then got to know some new acquaintances which led to some unexpected opportunities. By the same reckoning, I now also owe a great deal of undying gratitude for the band’s music effectively helping to save my life when I was at my lowest ebb during those deep, dark, troubled times – and indeed most likely continue to do so. The admiration and love I have for the creators of this wonderful music remains undimmed and unconditional, even if it’s never reciprocated.

The official Saint Etienne fan club – Lovers Unite – was set up during 1992 and anybody who signed up at the time (was email even a thing back then I wonder? How curious to now reflect on this) got a special membership card with their own number on it, then were granted regular newsletters in the form of a glossy A5 sized 12-page fan magazine titled, curiously, Clenbuterol, with all manner of weird, wonderful, amusing and reflective musings within courtesy of the band members. It was a truly delightful thing to have in the post from time to time. I was sent the last five issues (#11 to #15) over the later years, as well as my membership card, which accompanied an exclusive Saint Etienne Christmas CD (Xmas 2003). Ironically, I’d just missed getting issue #10 before my first instalment, as I discovered that it featured on the cover a photoshopped image of a mutant long-eared cat that was on a spoof flyer I created which I sent to the band as a bit of a joke (see image right). This surprised and amused me no end!

At the very end of this article is a photo showing an assemblage of the admittedly modest collection of my Lovers Unite fan club mailout items from the band. I cannot ever hope to compete with those super dedicated fans who have collected absolutely everything: I guess I am just a passenger who was lucky and privileged enough to hitch along for the ride after all these years, i.e. nothing special then.

Surrey (EP, limited release, 2018)*
Surrey North (EP, fan club release, 2018)
Camel Coat/Little Chef (single, limited release, 2018)*
Mondo Casino (compilation, limited release, 2018)*
Saturday Boy (single, Record Store Day release, 2019)

Towards the end of the 2010s, Saint Etienne issued a further succession of strictly limited edition releases, some of which* were tie-ins with the Good Humor 20th Anniversary tours in the UK and USA and only made available on dates relating to that tour. There was also another Record Store Day-related release, a 7″ single with two exclusive new songs Saturday Boy and You Don’t Own Me.

2019 – a long dark tunnel but with light towards the end 

With the 2020s looming, the twelve months leading up to it were fraught with all manner of personal trials, tribulations and challenges on a scale never before encountered. And yet ironically, at this point I was happily employed in a dream job at the newly-opened British Music Experience (BME) in Liverpool – an interactive exhibition-cum-archival museum which had relocated from its original base in London (operating between 2009 – 2014 at the O2 Arena – the former Millennium Dome) to its logical new home on Liverpool’s iconic waterfront. I was one of forty lucky folks who were offered one of several full time, part time and casual posts within the new museum dedicated to chronicling British music from the 1930s right up to the present day.

Its opening in January 2017 was amid little fanfare, but gradually its profile grew and within a year it had become a key stopping point on the ever growing Liverpool tourist trail. My post there lasted three years before the onset of the 2020s, when the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic during the beginning of that new decade created the usual long term disruption, leading to the closure of the attraction (along with many other places) when a series of lockdowns were forced upon the entire country.

Before this however, I endured a torrid 2019 due to the loss of eight of my best friends and acquaintances, one after the other: through illness (cancer and sepsis) and tragic accidents (two were killed by vehicles). It was frankly beyond comprehension how such an unrelenting, and indeed unprecedented, run of bereavements could have transpired, but it did. Once again I was put through the grinder emotionally and mentally, and yet, despite still holding down the job at the BME, it was quite difficult to keep focused and positive. Worse, there were very few music-related events that year which would have otherwise served as a timely distraction and antidote. If anything, the bereavements I had in 2019 set a precedent for the next few years to follow – the tally of friends and acquaintances I lost grew ever higher as 2020, 2021, then 2022 progressed, an average of eight or nine per year. Sadly, that is what life throws at you as you and your friends all get older together, and there is little we can do to stop it, suffice to say that I long for a time machine to take me back to the heady years almost constantly.

The only notable consolation from this decisively grim period was the fact that I’d already enjoyed another much needed visit to the Netherlands at the end of November 2018, and, so reinvigorated was I from that visit, I promptly booked a second quick follow-up visit for January 2019: a mere two months later. That was exactly what I needed but, suffice to say, it didn’t stop the run of tragic losses of good friends (a couple of them dearly loved pals) I was to endure from the end of February 2019 right up to December that year.

So, in an attempt to try and blast away the cobwebs from that relatively grim year 2019, I booked a third trip in less than 15 months back to the Netherlands, this time for January 2020. Again, like the other two visits in late 2018/early 2019, the main purpose of the trip was to glut on all the record shops over there in Amsterdam, being a shameless vinyl junkie. On each of these three occasions my luggage was overladen with the weight of more than thirty records, many of them impulse purchases needless to say. Bizarrely, not one single Saint Etienne vinyl record was found during any of these jaunts. I wonder why?

Nevertheless, despite 2019 being fraught with so many tragic losses, there was something worth looking forward to in October that year – our beloved Saint Etienne were returning on tour again to mark the 35th anniversary of their Tiger Bay album. They came back to Liverpool once more – yowsa! – for the second time since 2012, and played at the salubrious Everyman Theatre. A suitably arty and refined space that has seen so many legendary performers over the decades, the Everyman’s all seated venue was rather similar to that of the RNCM in Manchester. Saint Etienne duly delivered another wondrous set (no stage invasions this time I don’t think) as everybody gathered that night revelled in re-living those glory days of the mid-1990s. And didn’t we all have a blast? After the show I hung around at the loading bay to catch the band briefly before heading off for the last bus home, as I had four exclusive gifts to hand over to Bob, Pete, Sarah and Debsey. They were humorous hand-crafted cards designed as spoofs of their first four album covers but each adapted with every image and song title as feline puns. Being self-professed cat fans like myself, the band loved them and I recall Bob actually sharing them on his social media feed a couple of days later!

2020 – what the hell was going on?

If anybody was to look back at the year 2020, it would be interesting to gauge what their exact feelings were about it. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic had changed the world like no other major event in recent memory. It was a very strange time: simultaneously disorientating, discombobulating, frustrating, worrying, frightening, but also calming and reflective, as it meant that due to everything socially-related falling off the proverbial cliff, we had to make do with our own space and company.

Some found it hard and disconcerting, but others wallowed and revelled in it. I was pitched somewhere between the two. With no work or social engagement, I threw myself into creative overdrive. I worked on a series of music metro map posters, wrote short horror stories and rhyming verse, even creating a body of music the sheer volume of which I had never ever achieved before (at least forty different completed pieces of music, and further unfinished ideas for more pieces – sadly still unrealised and incomplete to this day). One of the metro map poster designs – unsurprisingly – featured Saint Etienne’s studio albums (and a few others) up to that point, represented as colour coded train routes with all the songs as stations. It was intended to be put to the band as a possible piece of fan-made merchandise but as of yet I haven’t followed it through any further.

I also went crazy on YouTube discovering more unheard of new bands’ music by rabbit holing obsessively. It was around this time (initially in 2019 to be fair) that I belatedly discovered – and fell in love with – the music of a trio of Swedish acts: Wintergatan, Red Sleeping Beauty, and The Radio Dept. The latter, in the space of just a few months, became one of my most cherished bands ever, on a par with Saint Etienne. I later discovered that they even supported Saint Etienne at a London date some time in 2010. I quickly sought out, purchased, and played their recordings endlessly, and indeed 2020 was the unreal year that was almost entirely soundtracked by music from The Radio Dept. and Red Sleeping Beauty among others.

Unfortunately, when the lockdowns finally were lifted by late 2021, I discovered that my workplace the British Music Experience had decided to shrink to a self-sustaining skeleton staff of just 12 full-time employees to keep operational costs down, and instead opting to recruit trainees undertaking work experience only, so the rest of the part-timers (such as myself) were no longer required and we were never asked back for the next season. A total all-out bummer for sure. But then that’s the way the shit sandwich sometimes turns mouldy I guess. I have never ventured back through their doors since. There’s no reason to, is there?

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You (album, 2021)  UK #14
Her Winter Coat (flexi single, 2021)
A Kiss Like This (flexi single, 2021)
Xmas 21 (limited CD EP, 2021)

Saint Etienne teased the upcoming release of their long awaited new album (four years since Home Counties) with the simple phrase ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ complete with a photo of two attractive and appropriately sun-kissed models, one male, the other female. It transpired that this was the title of the new album which was recorded in a completely unconventional and novel way – all created during lockdown and virtually remotely, with various members scattered across the country: Sarah in Oxfordshire, Pete in Hove, near Brighton and Bob based up in Saltaire, West Yorkshire. Augustin Bousfield – now a regular collaborator, arranger and producer – once again played a large part on this recording.

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You was a totally unique album in the Saint Etienne canon.  The overall vibe of the music within the whole recording fully reflected the strange times that we’d all endured through its almost disembodied, dream-like and woozy ambience. It was assembled using slowed down/treated samples of other acts’ songs* – many of which were deliberate reference points to the music of the 1990s, and the music was consciously at a much slower, downtempo pace. Often referred to as ‘vapourwave’, this genre incorporated elements of older songs that were intended to trigger emotional responses and nostalgic memories of bygone eras…..in particular the ecstasy-fuelled heady times of the 1990s.

* Lighthouse Family, Natalie Imbruglia, Samantha Mumba, The Lightning Seeds, Tasmin Archer, Honeyz.

On first listen, this new Saint Etienne album came across as a bit of an eye (and ear) opener. Gone were the instant pointers and references to the multitude of genres that the band were so adept at appropriating and in its place something akin to the aural equivalent of watching old vintage Super 8 film footage, but rendered in more vivid Colorvision, moving in slow motion. Indeed the film that accompanied this album on DVD featured similarly evocative scenes showing the same models and many other characters captured in a variety of different settings, going about their lives, swimming, leisurely strolling, chilling out, etc…

Even more curiously, the lyrics were now pared down to the barest minimum, with the vocals (Sarah can only be made out fleetingly this time, almost if a spectral presence) effectively forming an instrument in its own right. Short phrases were simply repeated, or where vocals were missing, samples of other voices came in (Natalie Imbruglia’s refrain from her song Beauty On The Fire on the lead track Pond House was the most notable, her sleepy, dialled-in sampled voice sounding uncannily like that of Sarah’s). Another even more fascinating insight to this album can be gained from Bob Stanley’s later admission that all of the intriguing track titles – cryptic, often oddball names like Music Again, Fonteyn, Little K, Penlop, Blue Kite – were all purloined, lock, stock and barrel, from the names of racing horses!

Such was the fervent interest in getting hold of this intriguing new album by Saint Etienne that it achieved something quite unexpected, even during this strange lockdown period we were still experiencing at the time upon the record’s release. Imagine everybody’s surprise when the album debuted at #14 in the official UK album charts on the first week – their first top 20 album since 1998’s Good Humor, all of twenty-three years ago!

In November 2021, Saint Etienne toured this album and returned once more to Liverpool (wow – a hat-trick of dates now!), playing at another classy and esoteric venue – the old Byzantine Grand Central Hall, now increasingly used for live events. The Grand Central Hall with its picturesque dome is Liverpool’s answer to Manchester’s Albert Hall – both of which were long disused spaces brought back to life. Prolific artist and Heavenly Recordings labelmate, Jane Weaver, opened for the band, playing songs from her own outstanding new album Flock which was only released earlier that year.

With a full eight piece band in tow this time, Saint Etienne once again showed us how, despite the unforgiving passage of time, their iconic tunes remained timeless and evergreen and never ever lost their sheen or brilliance. As I had already hung around with the band as they soundchecked earlier, I didn’t stay around once the gig finished but headed straight home. I handed Bob Stanley an exclusive one-off print of the aforementioned Metro map style A3 poster of Saint Etienne’s albums arranged as colour-coded railway routes. He was pleasantly surprised to receive this and offered his warmest thanks in return. I hadn’t planned to do anything else with it unless the band were interested in using the concept for a future piece of merchandise.

A lovingly-written review of this show was posted by a fellow Louder Than War writer which you can read here. In it he mentions the brewing storm that was raging outside as the weather turned decidedly tumultous, and it was all we could do to brave the elements on our way home after the show ended. The buses, thankfully were okay, and I got home in the nick of time before it got even wilder. My main worry of course, was hoping Saint Etienne managed their journey back safely as they were not stopping over in Liverpool for the night before their next point of call but heading instead to Warrington. Barely ten years previous, we saw Saint Etienne playing Manchester Ritz, only to encounter heavy snowfall on the way out, and now it was the turn of a howling storm with 60 mph gusts that greeted us. Who exactly works the weather, we wonder?

To tie in with the winter tour, two limited edition coloured flexi singles, Her Winter Coat and A Kiss Like This, were issued simultaneously with another EP, Xmas 21, which compiled the tracks from the two flexis along with two further songs onto one CD. Main track Her Winter Coat was a truly affecting and evocative piece of music, and carried such emotional weight in its slow-building symphonic story-telling that it ranks among one of the finest things Saint Etienne have yet released.

The Character Of Saint Etienne (limited fan club vinyl album, 2022)
Fairfax High (limited vinyl album, 2022)

A full year elapsed before more new Saint Etienne items were issued, this time the first ever vinyl version of Fairfax High, their 1998 US-only B-sides compilation that collected together the Good Humor era tracks. Along with a second new release – another exclusive outtakes and curios collection titled The Character Of Saint Etienne – both were issued on the Foreign Office imprint pressed respectively on delectable blue splatter vinyl and translucent cobalt blue vinyl as a tasty pre-Christmas treat for the fans. Truly, we were being spoilt rotten as ever.

Music For Hermione (soundtrack, 10″ single, 2023)

Multi-media artist Andy Holden created a specially commissioned animated film titled Kingdom Of The Sick that featured as part of his one man exhibition titled Full Of Days held in March 2023. This animation tells the sad story of unknown artist Hermione Burton whose curiously unusual paintings remained undiscovered and destined for obscurity until they were found purely by chance across various charity shops by Holden. Hermione suffered from rheumatic heart disease which ultimately tragically cut short her life in 2007. The film was also first publicly exhibited a year previous as part of the British Art Show at Manchester’s Whitworth Gallery during summer 2022. Sarah Cracknell took on the voice of Hermione as she provided the narration. The soundtrack – two short elegiac pieces with spoken word – were issued as a limited edition 10″ single in time for the festive season of 2023 as part of the now customary annual ritual of Saint Etienne granting us with exclusive pre-Christmas releases.

Saint Etienne were working on the successor to their previous album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You for much of the previous year or so, thus their absence from live performances at least was for good reason. In the interim, the ever prolific Bob Stanley had written and published a couple more outstandingly detailed books on various music subjects, ranging from the beginnings of pop music (Let’s Do It! – 2022) to the Bee Gees (Children Of The World – 2024). His first such gargantuan tome – Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! (The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce) was issued in 2013/2014 to great critical acclaim and subsequently revised and updated twice. That latter book incidentally was the first book I picked up to read cover to cover when I first started my new job at the British Music Experience back in January 2017. Bob undertook a short book signing jaunt in May 2022 to talk about his newest volume Let’s Do It! and called by at Liverpool ONE’s Waterstones, where around 30 or so fans, including myself, attended.

Half Light (single, 2024)
The Night (album, 2024)
Deep Into The Night (limited EP, 2024)
Alone Together (remix EP, 2025)

Returning after a three year absence with their next studio album, Saint Etienne chose to pursue an even more ambient trajectory with The Night – a beautifully crepuscular recording that stretches the imagination into deeply relaxing mind states and serves as the ideal soothing balm for the restlessness and unease that pervades every waking moment of our increasingly unsettled lives. I reviewed this majestically atmospheric album in depth on its original release and you can revisit the piece here. I still believe that it’s among one of the most honest and sympathetically-written reviews of their albums I have yet managed to come up with, even if very few people noticed or appreciated it at the time.

The limited release of companion EP Deep Into The Night was issued with initial pre-orders of The Night through the band’s website, and explores even further similar themes and, like its parent album, features beautifully realised tone poems and subtly stirring mood pieces aplenty.  The only slight downer concerning the album was that its chosen date of release in mid-December coincided with the dreaded pre-Christmas rush where all the usual flotsam and jetsam took precedence, rendering The Night all but completely invisible, buried under the weight of everything else. Unlike its predecessor which gatecrashed the top twenty, it failed to make any impression at all, meaning it was the sole Saint Etienne studio album to do so, much to our chagrin and disappointment. To keep interest in the album buoyant, a few months later in May 2025, the album’s closer Alone Together was subsequently issued as a remix EP with four further new variations on the track.

‘Settle In’ and revisit the glorious nocturnal splendour of The Night on YouTube here:

Why does it hurt when my heart misses the beat?

So said Susanne Freytag on the mid-1980s hit The Nine Lives Of Dr. Mabuse by seminal German synth quartet Propaganda. That song was an enormous, almost Wagnerian tour de force (running ten minutes long on the album A Secret Wish!) which encapsulated almost everything that was quintessential about a lot of music in the 1980s – thrillingly grandiose, delightfully over-produced, theatrical and stentorian. There was no other band like them back then, and even now, forty years later, the record sounds remarkably timeless and relevant.

However, amid all that shouting and screaming about pain (most evident of course on Propaganda’s next hit Duel), it was yours truly who had to deal with a lot of pain for two years between 2022 and 2024 as I awaited my much needed op for a hernia which developed out of the blue after a particularly virulent post-Xmas coughing bug (not Covid) which lasted all of two months. I ruptured part of the abdominal wall where the intestine dropped through and it made for a very uncomfortable life where walking, standing, and even strenuous exercise (in my case cycling) was compromised. Result? No gigs anymore, unless I spent all of it sat down.

I felt like an invalid and was pretty much down in the dumps for a considerable length of time. What was worse, I couldn’t make any vinyl record buying trips back to the Netherlands even if I wanted to – so for five long, agonising years (since my last trip pre-lockdown in January 2020) I was grounded. The black dog of depression returned and sat on my shoulders for the duration, I started to hide away from the world like a hermit again, and things spiralled alarmingly down some undesirably dark recesses, resulting in me reaching out to various counselling and mental health organisations to seek at least some support and face to face engagement.

One of these organisations was the Martin Gallier Project – an established local suicide prevention charity based here in Chester and the Wirral which I only knew about thanks to Andy McCluskey from the band Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark drawing our attention to them when he was present at a special launch of the charity’s annual Christmas Lights switch fundraiser event in November 2022. I got to speak with him about his support for the charity as well as the Liverpool Museums of which he was also a patron.

Andy remembered me from my time working at the British Music Experience when OMD had their own 40th anniversary exhibition there in 2018 so we got talking about my Metro maps project and how I had already produced one for his band as well, cataloguing all their albums. He was totally fascinated by it and expressed an instant desire to have the map made into a piece of merchandise, which delighted me no end. I really appreciated his support and his kind words, and he told me to keep on keeping on and not let the bad things in life drag me down as he was aware I was in some considerable discomfort due to my hernia. ‘Hey, join the club! We’re all the same: we get older and our bodies get crankier’ – he laughed, then revealed to me that he needed to sort his own dodgy knee joint out which would mean corrective surgery at some point in the near future.

For now, any further dark festering thoughts of self-harm, or even far worse and more final, to escape a tortuous life of never-ending mental and physical pain were momentarily pushed roughly aside. I guess what he said emboldened me a little and set me on my way to finally having my hernia operation in November 2024. But a full year before that, in November 2023 – I had the honour of catching OMD live in concert for the first time in yonks (since 2010) at Liverpool’s Camp And Furnace, when they launched their new album Bauhaus Staircase at a small intimate hometown show before taking to the arenas. Needless to say, whilst my dearest best friend Jonathan who came along with me was happily bopping along with the crowd, I had to watch the whole thing sat in the disabled area with all the wheelchairs as I couldn’t stand up for long …. damn!

Watch the special episode below of Classic Album Sundays with Saint Etienne as special guests which was aired in October 2024. The band talk about their debut album Foxbase Alpha.

Return to Amsterdam – at long last!

My corrective surgery for the hernia now completed and me enormously relieved and grateful, I was able to once again do the things I was previously always able to do before the two years of suffering I endured: power walk everywhere, and stand up for long periods at gigs. Within a week of being fixed, I promptly booked my long overdue trip back to the Netherlands for January 2025 a time of year I actually prefer travelling in due to it being much cheaper, fewer tourists and of course the likelihood that hostel rooms would be quieter and under-booked (and often half empty too). I decided, to compensate for not having been back for exactly five years, to make this the longest ever visit at ten days, and nine nights, duration.

On touchdown at Amsterdam Schiphol, everything was exactly as it was except for a couple of minor undesirable revelations: firstly, the prices of absolutely everything had rocketed – blame the twin pandemics we’d just endured, one of them being Covid-19 and the other being Rampant Corporate Greed: I guess the two are connected. Secondly, due to the vast area of high pressure sat over this part of the continent (including the UK), thick freezing fog blanketed the city – and much of the Netherlands – for a number of days, with the forecast that the second half of the week would see the sun finally breaking through. As it transpired out of the ten days I was there, the fog lingered for almost eight of them.

Sure it was dry and settled, but cos of that and no discernible wind, the fog clung on  and the sun only finally broke through for one of a half days towards the end. Well, at least I could still do all my record shops as usual, but even the annual Amsterdam Light Festival installations were hardly visible along the canals because of the way the fog just enveloped everything. The prevailing weather conditions also scuppered my planned excursion to another favourite city, Utrecht, to visit the now fully restored Dom Toren (cathedral tower). That trip happened later in the year as I returned again in September 2025 when the weather was much better – warm with bright sunshine for five of the seven days.

As for the records, thirty-four items were bagged this time. And still not one single vinyl LP, 7″ or 12″ rarity (that I didn’t already have, natch) was found by Saint Etienne in any of the twenty-six record shops I called in on. Were they not a popular band over in the Netherlands or something? Can anybody else enlighten me on this?

The news all Saint Etienne fans were secretly dreading

In spring 2025 a bombshell was duly dropped which turned the heads (and even hearts) of everybody who has been a lifelong, or even more recent, fan of the band. Saint Etienne announced that their upcoming new studio album would be their last. Following less than a year on from their previous release The Night, the new album titled International, to be released in September that year, would be considered as a lovingly-created parting farewell gesture to their legions of lovers and dreamers…. featuring guest appearances from a stellar cast of collaborators and singers – long-time Heavenly Social friends and comrades Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers and Jez Williams of Doves, Janet Planet of Confidence Man, 1980’s pop heartthrob Nick Heyward, Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, synth boffin Vince Clarke, and others. This final chapter of the band’s recorded output would tip its hat to, revisit and bring the curtain down on more than three decades of wonderfully eclectic indie pop and dance confections.

In an emotionally-worded press release, Bob, Pete and Sarah explained that it was only right to now go out on a high given that the dizzying and ecstatic 35 year journey they had undertaken far exceeded anybody’s expectations of longevity, least of all their own. I would have thought that somewhere along the line – amid that public declaration from the band – there was the muted sounds of lots of crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth, given the fervent devotion and undying adoration the band have inspired in countless fans. I was pretty choked up too for sure but then I had a good reason… the band and their music practically saved my life, and then later changed it beyond recognition too. I owe so much to this band that it’s difficult to put into just a few words and sentences … otherwise I would not be writing this three-part epic would I?

Thus Saint Etienne promised that the forthcoming – thirteenth – album (now, is that number supposed to be a portent for unlucky, given that it’s the last one?) would be replete with almost everything that the preceding twelve albums featured: a timely summary of all of the best kept elements that so charmed, enthralled, delighted and captivated everyone over all these years. There would be bits of dialogue between the songs as a throwback to So Tough (and Finisterre), there would be banging dance tunes, some tracks in collaboration with special guest singers, shameless pop songs, delicate ethereal ballads, amusing interludes, and heartbreaking show stoppers. It would ostensibly be the Essence Of Saint Etienne distilled into one 45 minute 12-track pop odyssey.

A final farewell UK and European tour as a send-off to their 35 year career was also announced for the following year, in September 2026, but a few selected festival dates would precede that. Within days of the announcement and tickets being available, they were duly snapped up and pretty much all sold out. I was also not in the country at the time because September 2025 was when my second visit to the Netherlands was in full swing. By the time I returned, the inevitable upshot was clear for me to see: Manchester New Century Hall (15th September 2026), the closest and only date I could actually physically travel to, was completely sold out. It was only touts charging their scandalous rip off prices that offered any chance of getting a ticket now. I was gutted basically. No final farewell Saint Etienne live experience for me then.

Glad (single, 2025)
International (album, 2025)  UK #8
Intl Xtra (limited bonus EP, 2025)
Brand New Me (single, 2025)
Take Me To The Pilot (single, 2025)

A few months prior to the album’s release, Saint Etienne previewed the first single via a somewhat unusual tactic – including a 7″ vinyl copy of it with the latest edition (issue 126) of Electronic Sound music magazine. This edition prefaced the official CD single release by a fortnight. Glad’s rambunctious rhythm was a deliberate and conscious hark back to the golden era of ‘big beat’ when electronic dance duos like the Chemical Brothers were pretty much the torch bearers. It’s a strangely paradoxical single – because it sounds simultaneously euphoric and a little melancholic. I don’t know why that is, but it’s maybe something to do with the fact that we already had embedded within us the realisation that these would be the last recordings from the band, and so there was this inevitable sense of finality about proceedings.

The way the pumping intro surges upwards like a volley of fists in the air gives it that almost ecstatic and celebratory vibe, but then when the beat momentarily drops out and the vocal becomes reflective, it’s almost as if the music is daring you to smile and weep at the same time. The song is disappointingly brief – at just 3.11 minutes. So what did I do? I only went and created a longer, old-skool style 1980s extended 12″ edit of it purely for my own gratification. No fancy shit, tempo changes or what remixers usually do nowadays – just extended bars and looped sections, and double length choruses – taking the final length of the track to 4:53 minutes. I think it sounds pretty good if I may say so myself.

The three B-sides on the CD showcase yet more of the diversity we have come to expect from Saint Etienne, even at this late juncture. Theme From Shapiro is a brief little electronic instrumental with initial spy-theme undertones courtesy of the electronic synth-harpsichord. Missing Pieces which follows is an addictive house piano-driven highlight with keyboard stabs that recall the best of prime era New Order singles from the 1980s.  Fire is a slow delicate piano ballad whose overall vibe recalls both the ambient numbers on The Night as well as an earlier 1990s B-side California Snow Story.

At the risk of needlessly repeating myself, International – the album – was given an extensive and detailed review by myself and can be revisited here, in case many people (I would assume that’s absolutely everybody then, evidently) missed it the first time around. Most gratifying of all, a week after release, the album smashed into the official UK charts at #8: their joint second-highest showing along with Tiger Bay (So Tough made it to #7). Midweek chart placings actually had it even higher, inside the top 5!

Rough Trade stores issued an exclusive bonus CD titled Intl Xtra (International Extra) featuring four additional non-album tracks: the sparse late night /after hours electronica of Almost (Sarcevic Electro Mix), the clipped funk guitar-and-sequencer led Spanish Song, the pulsing analogue synth throb of Walk Away From Her which could be almost an orphaned number from Finisterre, and the trip hop-influenced rhythm that drives the austere and minimalistic Things Break Down.

As if to make up for lost time, or future lost times, two further physical format singles were issued from International within months of each other, firstly the irresistible bounce of their Confidence Man collaboration, Brand New Me, replete with more new B-sides, was released in September hot on the heels of the album, whilst a third single Take Me To The Pilot – the co-write with Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, followed in December just before the end of the year, although a digital version of this track had already been made available as a preview for the album and was issued in August that year. Again, there were three further tracks on the CD format.

Many of the B-sides showed the band venturing even further out into previously uncharted terrain, with songs comprising different textures, moods, unorthodox arrangements and sounds. One of them veers off into a curiously experimental-meets-baroque territory (Lincoln Fields) whilst others are unadorned stripped down ballads (Spellbound, She Needs Love), and another (Remember Me) features an ambitious intermittent chordal arrangement that would not be out of place on a 1960s spy thriller soundtrack.

With these extra flipsides, the number of new tracks released by Saint Etienne that didn’t feature on the International album totalled thirteen – that’s practically an album’s worth of songs in itself. If these are really to be – as already hinted at – the final recordings from Saint Etienne, then there is no questioning the sheer wide-ranging breadth and adventurousness of this bonus material. Indeed, as befits the multitude of eclectic styles here, many of the tracks are composed by differing combinations of the various songwriters.

Everywhere I go, I’ve got your music

Few fans will argue that it’s often the hardest thing in the world when it comes to choosing one’s favourite songs from their favourite bands. Trying to compile that definitive top 10 is often seen as an onerous challenge that very few can really manage without that ever-present nagging thought that another deserving song has been omitted from the list that really should be in there. So that top 10 then invariably expands to a top 20….and maybe even then a top 25, or top 30, and so it goes on. Who hasn’t faced that dilemma?  I really admire those folks who go on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs (presented currently by erstwhile Saint Etienne ally Lauren Laverne) who then have to pick just eight pieces of music to be marooned forever with that won’t drive them out of their minds after repeated plays.

It’s also the same when one is presented with the task of trying to sum up in just a few words what they enjoy most about their beloved band.  I find it utterly impossible to put into just ten or twenty words why I think Saint Etienne and their music matter so much to me. So here I am, having just expended more than eight thousand words in both of the previous parts of this extended essay, and about to rack up almost as many for this third and final concluding instalment.

Compiling a mix tape/CD for friends who are new to Saint Etienne is another matter entirely – so what does one do? Pick the singles? The radio hits? Or do they trawl their vast archive of wonderful moments and curate a specially-chosen playlist taking in all of the genre-straddling stuff that features on B-sides and album tracks? Where does one start, and where does one end?  I made many of my own mixtapes and self-created CD-Rs of Saint Etienne favourites over the years, and I guess I am not alone either. Now, with thirteen studio albums, and almost as many fan club releases, compilation and remix collections, to account for, the task gets even harder. For instance, what about the obscure tracks that were download-only, or bonus tracks, or given away at gigs, or made available as Christmas releases? It’s one hell of a deep dive into the extensive, some would say exhaustive, repository of jewels.

But this is what makes Saint Etienne truly exemplary – so much music has been released in these 35 magical years, a journey which has seen the band circumnavigate so many wonderfully intriguing and fascinating roads, paths, highways, rivers, alleys, corridors, tapping into so much exotic and esoteric terrain, that one is sometimes hard pressed to remember everything.

If I was to compile / curate a 4-CD anthology of specially chosen highlights (omitting all the singles, thus focusing on album tracks, deep cuts, B-sides and various other curios), it would still be quite a tricky undertaking. Each CD would cover roughly an eight year span, thus CD1 would take in the years 1991-1998, CD2 would be 1999-2007, CD3 to encompass 2008-2016, and the final CD4 to be 2017-2025. But which songs to choose, huh? That’s the stuff of which lively arguments among fans are potentially made I would wager!

Online communities and social media

Back in the days of pre-broadband, dial-up internet (1990s to early 2000s – how quaint all of that seems now), there were the usual plethora of band websites, a handful of them officially instigated, and a vast majority of them created by fans and those with a passion for everything about their favourite artist(s). Whilst I inevitably was attracted to a few of these community forums enough to sign up as a participating member, the majority of these hosted domains were either crudely designed message boards replete with the annoying, omnipresent pop-up ads everywhere (surely the bane of any sane person’s internet browsing experience – hello EZ Boards and Yuku Forums) or were more professionally designed sites (e.g. NewOrderOnline) which had more stringent moderation of membership rules and regulations.

The Saint Etienne one I chose to become part of was one called called Lovers Unite (hosted by EZ Board, I think). I was unsure if it was officially endorsed or not, but I posted on it for a few years before I got fed up of the trolling and flaming – always such an integral part of these online forums and the internet in general more’s the pity – and the general tactlessness of a small minority of the members, regardless of where in the world they hailed from. My biggest bugbear – and one which governs how many online sites/forums/communities I partake in to this day – is a lack of courtesy, diplomacy and outright rudeness from some people who post online. There just isn’t any need for that sort of thing whatsoever.

Needless to day, the five or six community message boards I was a part of between 2000-2010 (chiefly for fans of Saint Etienne, Stereolab/Broadcast, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division/New Order, British Sea Power and UK/US Indie Music) were invariably plagued with some of these trolls who made life difficult for others. I mean, what is wrong with these people? We’re all united in our shared love of bands and indeed the vast majority of members of these groups are genuine fans who are totally decent caring folks, yet there are always those who simply derive nothing but sadistic pleasure in upsetting the unity and harmony of the group by just acting they way they do. It was enough for me to bail out of these groups entirely despite often having some really insightful and fascinating conversations about the bands’ music and our thoughts and theories. There is nothing I love more than talking about music and indeed passionately sharing my interest in some of the groups that we have a mutual love of, but as ever, you always get those who want to spoil things.

Exactly the same thing has happened since Facebook groups provided a similar platform with which to discuss our favourite bands. At one point I was a member of twenty different Facebook groups on all kinds of diverse bands – one of them Saint Etienne Disco as well as the band’s Official Facebook page – but in recent years, due to my intolerance of the same trolling/flaming/rude/undiplomatic elements in many of these groups, I have decided to just forego the whole lot, effectively putting me out of the loop when it comes to music-related news. It’s a hard choice that I made myself and sadly these days I have very little engagement with social media due to how toxic a lot of it has generally become.

What is indisputable is that, for some fans, many of these online community groups are the main resource for band news and also the place to start new friendships between members from all over, who often arrange social meet-ups to attend live shows together. Regrettably, it’s something which I haven’t really engaged with due to various reasons (nothing to do with being anti-social – more to do with self-consciousness / low self-esteem, and total blank refusal to be in group photos, much less have them shared online, as well as being ASD/neuro-divergent), so I guess I am resolutely out on my own here. It’s more important personally for me to have all the things that gave me so much joy and happiness long before the age of the internet was even a thing. Books, records, magazines, all that tactile, physical ephemera – those will always be there even if one day the digital realm might become seriously compromised.

I believe (the best memories are everlasting)

If the whole of the 1990s can instil in me so much euphoria and everlasting happy  memories (and some decidedly bittersweet and tragic ones too), then that is something I am still happy to hold onto and treasure. This applies to the entire output of my second much-adored band of the last 40 years, Saint Etienne. I’ve still got their music – the records, the tapes, the CDs, the fan club items, the photos, the memorabilia, the artefacts, and above all, the blissful recollections of all of the live shows I have attended from 1994 to 2021.

I am all too aware that all this constant harking back to – and yearning for – a simpler, and more euphoric time, and obsessing over nostalgia, instead of living for the present, may become my biggest weakness and my own worst enemy, but I make no apologies for that. Of course, it’s very tempting for me to delve further into waxing lyrical about how certain songs by bands whose music I have grown to love over so many years evoke and inspire all kinds of feelings and emotions within me.

It is always a challenge, personally – and indeed quite an onerous, if not impossible, undertaking – to try to attempt to touch upon all bases of such a singularly impressive and era-defining catalogue as that of Saint Etienne’s, in the hope that the pieces do justice to band’s legacy. I may well have fallen short in these respects – after all, I am used to harbouring feelings of unrequited love. But as long as their music continues to provide everlasting moments of escapism, solace, joy, elation and bliss in spite of just about everything else, then that is surely the most important thing of all. So farewell it might well be for the moment, but I would like to believe that this is not the definitive end.  Thank you dearly and graciously for the music, Saint Etienne. It’s been quite the ride and journey hasn’t it?

This is Lovers Unite Member Number 00792 signing off.

Words and reminiscences by Martin Gray.

Saint Etienne Metro Map, album and single cover montages created by Martin.

More special band features and live and album reviews can be found on Martin’s profile.