Saint Etienne are back with a new album, their 10th(!) due September 2021 - the lead single from it is a chilled out looped sample of Natalie Imbruglia's criminally underrated 2002 single “Beauty On The Fire”.

 

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is a meditative and sample-based LP recorded remotely during quarantine.

 

Saint Etienne recorded I’ve Been Trying To Tell You with TV and film composer Gus Bousfield, and the album is built from samples drawn from a very particular four-year period, from 1997 to 2001. In a press release, Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley — who published the great music criticism book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop in 2013 — says, “To me, it’s about optimism and the late 90s and how memory is an unreliable narrator. Pete [Wiggs] and Gus have done a properly amazing production job. I think it sounds gorgeous.” I’ve heard the album, and it’s soft and meditative and deeply, overwhelmingly pretty.

 

I'm here for some late 90s/early 2000s pop nostagia tbh. Sounds a bit like Portishead and Morcheeba all rolled into 1!

 

Sarah Cracknell: “It’s the first sample-driven album we’ve made

since So Tough and it’s been a really refreshing experience, such fun!

It’s both dreamy and atmospheric, late summer sounds.”

 

Have always enjoyed a bit of saint etienne so im interested in this.

I've always loved Saint Etienne, even though nothing they've done in later years has come close to matching their early/mid-90s stuff, which was pretty much pop perfection. The last album was their best for ages though and I'm quite enjoying the new single and looking forward to the new throwback sound :D

Edited July 31, 20213 yr by Mangø

I absolutely adore that album artwork :wub:

Loved the last album.

Beauty on the Fire deserved to do so much better.

Natalie and Saint Etienne new albums out next month, roll on September

Beauty on the Fire deserved to do so much better.

 

I looked it up- it peaked at number 26 on 28th July 2002. HUGE injustice IMO. I do remember that chart actually, mainly for the wonderful Doves and “Pounding” which was a few places higher (number 21) - but it was also the end of school and an epic hot summers day so this sounded so good!

 

Btw there is a film trailer out now-

 

Penlop was released last week. The video premieres in the morning

 

My only criticism with “Pond House” was that despite it being a great sample/idea, it didn't really develop and was stretched out for too long.

 

Do like “Penlop” more on first listen, and the video is.. lovely. It samples “Joy” by the Lightning Seeds, from their 1990 debut Cloudcuckooland

for me the sample in Pond House didn't work either... lets see this one...

Saw the accompanying film to this tonight in London which has the entire album as the soundtrack.

 

Some genius/unexpected samples, the opening song uses a wonderful and very effective sample of Honeyz’ Love of a Lifetime <3

 

I expect the album probably works better as a background, mostly ambient, film soundtrack as opposed to something I’ll be listening to a lot at home, but I’ll buy it anyway as there is some very nice stuff on here. The band did a Q+A after the film - apparently they had been working on another album before Covid which was scrapped as they couldn’t complete it remotely, and they switched to this project instead which was done over Zoom and emailing files around to each other etc.

Edited September 3, 20213 yr by gooddelta

New EP Her Winter Coat is out now.

 

I can’t say I was expecting to hear the title track to sample ‘The Millennium Prayer’ but it does. Still, take out Cliff himself and the Lord’s Prayer recital and it’s not actually a bad instrumental.

This era is not my favorite Saint Etienne era. There is not a single song I really love.