Brit-pop legends Saint Etienne have announced a performance at the Manchester O2 Ritz!
Formed in Croydon in 1990 by music journalist Bob Stanley with childhood friend Pete Wiggs, and soon joined by singer Sarah Cracknell, Saint Etienne arose within the context of the indie-dance movement of that era but created a unique sound which – albeit accidentally – paved the way for what would later become known as Britpop
Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?
Marvin Hamlisch was not yet 30 when he wrote those words for the mouth of Barbra Streisand. Even then, Hamlisch was acutely aware that as a narrator of our own stories, the human memory is at best unreliable and at worst mendacious. That same awareness resonates through every bar, beat and breath of I’ve Been Trying To Tell You, the tenth studio album by Saint Etienne,
The album, released in 2021 and accompanied by a specially-made film directed by acclaimed fashion photographer Alasdair McLellan with sleeve notes from socialist writer Owen Hatherley, is made largely from samples and sounds drawn from the turn of the new century. “It’s about memory,” Bob explains, “and how it can fog and play tricks on you. Specifically, it’s about the late Nineties, and current nostalgia for the Nineties.”
The accompanying film, which premiered at the NFT, came about when Bob Stanley contacted Alasdair McLellan after the latter had used Saint Etienne’s “Nothing Can Stop Us” in a Marc Jacobs commercial.
Their earliest albums – 1991 debut Foxbase Alpha and its 1993 successor So Tough – tapped into the collective consciousness by using an accretion of disparate elements – Long Wave football commentary, a snatch of Four Tops vocals or a sample of Dusty Springfield strings, some dialogue from Billy Liar, a melody from a long-forgotten perfume ad – to create a richly evocative memory-world which was specifically British, even when the component parts themselves were not.
Wednesday June 8th
Grab your tickets now via www.gigsandtours.com.
