Artists
Biography
Finisterre may be a good place to be, but how did Saint Etienne get there? What on earth are Sarah, Bob and Pete doing there? The met office may have surrendered Finisterre from its BBC radio shipping forecast, but Saint Etienne are not about to surrender anything.
There is something uplifting about Saint Etienne now, kicking up a fuss andmaking a nuisance of themselves, questioningly, in the company of Wildflower, a lady more usually found upstaging the UK hip hop elite.
For Saint Etienne were last seen leaving the twentieth century in the company of German electronic adventurers To Rococo Rot and arch arranger Sean O'Hagen. That LP, The Sound of Water, suggested escape from the city so associated with the group. Finisterre rather suggests fighting back andsaying something really about the state we're in.
Soul scholar Dave Godin has always said that "context is everything". For Saint Etienne the prevailing context has been that of change, as they twis tone way and then another, leaving the listener to choose their own variation or interpretation - glam dance floor vamps, shifty studio scientists, whatever. Such ambiguity sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Finisterre then is the right place to be, and still part of an inalienable heritage which sprang in 1990 from what amounts to the DIY punk aesthetic roots of anyone can do it: here's the dub house blueprint, here's a sampler, now go out and have a hit. Except that the best of their contemporaries like A Man Called Adam and Marina Van Rooy never did, and Saint Etienne lost the plot and kept on having hits.
The extra curricular activities of pop stars are endlessly fascinating, anda test of whether they can walk the talk. The DJ dabblings, writing, and club running antics of Bob and Pete are well documented and proof of their passion. More interesting though is the way Sarah quietly achieved iconic status in the coming corridors of power, where she is viewed somewhere between Naomi Klein and Patsy Cline as a true female pop role model with real dignity and charm.
Thinking back to the early Saint Etienne LPs, maybe given the mood they're in, it is now time to admit So Tough was inspired by the Slits' song of the same name, rather than the more obvious Beach Boys title. Those early Saint Etienne works have become classics of the cut'n'paste, pick'n'mix, salvaged sounds and eerie experiments school of art. This was a theme developed in a succession of sleeve notes by great writers like Jon Savage, Julie Burchill, Douglas Coupland, and Simon Reynolds. An attention to detail all too often sadly lacking in pop, which could be so special.
Reviewing their achievements one notes that oddly there were four years between the release of the Tiger Bay set in 1994 and the unveiling of the Good Humour collection in 1998. The silence in between speaks volumes, and who remembers the mid-'90s anyway? Whole swathes of people went missing, and an awful lot changed. Saint Etienne were no different. They changed labels (Creation to Sub Pop - wonderfully perverse!) and we changed governments. Maybe momentarily there was a sense of optimism, but for how long?
So four years on, Saint Etienne are in Finisterre and it feels right for these days. Finisterre may mean the end of the world, but as the song says: "Dreams never end "
There is something uplifting about Saint Etienne now, kicking up a fuss andmaking a nuisance of themselves, questioningly, in the company of Wildflower, a lady more usually found upstaging the UK hip hop elite.
For Saint Etienne were last seen leaving the twentieth century in the company of German electronic adventurers To Rococo Rot and arch arranger Sean O'Hagen. That LP, The Sound of Water, suggested escape from the city so associated with the group. Finisterre rather suggests fighting back andsaying something really about the state we're in.
Soul scholar Dave Godin has always said that "context is everything". For Saint Etienne the prevailing context has been that of change, as they twis tone way and then another, leaving the listener to choose their own variation or interpretation - glam dance floor vamps, shifty studio scientists, whatever. Such ambiguity sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Finisterre then is the right place to be, and still part of an inalienable heritage which sprang in 1990 from what amounts to the DIY punk aesthetic roots of anyone can do it: here's the dub house blueprint, here's a sampler, now go out and have a hit. Except that the best of their contemporaries like A Man Called Adam and Marina Van Rooy never did, and Saint Etienne lost the plot and kept on having hits.
The extra curricular activities of pop stars are endlessly fascinating, anda test of whether they can walk the talk. The DJ dabblings, writing, and club running antics of Bob and Pete are well documented and proof of their passion. More interesting though is the way Sarah quietly achieved iconic status in the coming corridors of power, where she is viewed somewhere between Naomi Klein and Patsy Cline as a true female pop role model with real dignity and charm.
Thinking back to the early Saint Etienne LPs, maybe given the mood they're in, it is now time to admit So Tough was inspired by the Slits' song of the same name, rather than the more obvious Beach Boys title. Those early Saint Etienne works have become classics of the cut'n'paste, pick'n'mix, salvaged sounds and eerie experiments school of art. This was a theme developed in a succession of sleeve notes by great writers like Jon Savage, Julie Burchill, Douglas Coupland, and Simon Reynolds. An attention to detail all too often sadly lacking in pop, which could be so special.
Reviewing their achievements one notes that oddly there were four years between the release of the Tiger Bay set in 1994 and the unveiling of the Good Humour collection in 1998. The silence in between speaks volumes, and who remembers the mid-'90s anyway? Whole swathes of people went missing, and an awful lot changed. Saint Etienne were no different. They changed labels (Creation to Sub Pop - wonderfully perverse!) and we changed governments. Maybe momentarily there was a sense of optimism, but for how long?
So four years on, Saint Etienne are in Finisterre and it feels right for these days. Finisterre may mean the end of the world, but as the song says: "Dreams never end "