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Although there’s a lot of file sharing, on ‘International’ the identity which Saint Etienne fans have cherished is rarely if ever under threat.
Nothing should surprise us in music these days, a branch of art of which The Rolling Stones accountants seemed to feel that anybody needed the execrable Hackney Diamonds, which it turns out isn’t even the career terminus it should’ve been.
Balance that against the fact International is to be the last new work from Saint Etienne and you’re turning a smile upside down.
Forming at the height of rave, they gave dance music a Carnaby Steet aesthetic; Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob
Stanley were unlikely pop stars by the mid-nineties, after which the derivative chillout scene stole much of their blueprint.
Irony being, well, ironic, Saint Etienne’s last two albums had been their most sonically interesting in decades, a school of thought especially true of The Night, a patchwork of found sounds, ambient drones and more traditional song structures.
Bold yes, but this wasn’t material with a broad enough appeal to secure that bijou weekend cottage in Hunstanton so, wisely for this last hurrah, everything comes almost full circle.
If you’re after a clumsy high concept for the whole thing here, imagine a retirement do where the DJ was playing your tunes, most of which sound like the best of the ones you did in the past, except they’re all actually new stuff.
That doesn’t read right, but hopefully you get the drift.
This playlist instead of a gold watch thing is shaped via a number of collaborators, the sort of line-up you can pull together when your group chat is full of the weird and the wonderful in your chosen field.
Opener Glad, for example, works up a track put together by Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and features the guitar of Doves’ Jez Williams; blocky, beaty and beautiful, Cracknell’s velvety vocals have rarely sounded so pristine as the retro-sunshine pops out of every note.
Speaking of retro, Nick Heyward’s guest turn on The Go Betweens kitchen sink dramas is a pleasantly engaging surprise, whilst still busy with the still contemporary Orbital, Paul Hartnoll gives Take Me To The Pilot a deluxe Gatecrasher style trance uplift.
Not that anybody really expected it, but although there’s a lot of file sharing going on here, the identity which so many of Saint Etienne’s fans have cherished is rarely if ever under threat.
Veteran producer Erol Alkan joins in the fun on Sweet Melodies, but the downtempo, sunset vibes are snugly familiar, whilst the effervescent house of He’s Gone – a collab with Xenomania’s Tim Powell – grabs hold and pulls.
The same combination then pulls out what can only be described as an absolute banger with Dancing Heart, all chunky sub bass and pop funk jams.
Meanwhile, in things that you instinctively suspected you always knew, Confidence Man’s Janet Planet is revealed as a massive Saint Etienne stan – and with equal predictability she very nearly steals the show on the impossibly bright and soulful Brand New Me.
As a farewell, the emphasis is leaving everybody with smile on their face, with the exception of Why Are You Calling – probably ‘cos we don’t want it to stop, guys – but the downtempo closer The Last Time has at least an air of finality, if not of collective bows being taken just yet.
Nothing should surprise anyone in music, and its hardly news that International is a stylish and life-affirming vehicle for Saint Etienne to let us down gently.
Turns out it’s not only love that can break your heart.