I think perhaps I’ve been listening to this in the wrong context. I mean, I love Saint Etienne. Love, love, LOVE them. This new album, which was released on Friday, has garnered all sorts of praise from many different online zines, blogs and glossy music mags. Can I be honest with you though? Whisper this quietly… I don’t really get it!
Or, at least, I didn’t really get it, and now it’s occurred to me that this is very much a ‘three in the morning’ kind of record, the band’s own ‘Lifeforms‘, if you will. So I guess it was never going to resonate with me in quite the same way as a soundtrack to my car journeys, was it? Because that’s how I’ve been listening, up to this point. Stupid me. It’s a ‘sit up in the small hours on your own‘ album. I get it now. However, I am keen for everybody else to know that this is most certainly not the Saint Etienne you’re used to, despite the fact that they have, admittedly, flirted with ambient recordings before. That’s not to say it’s entirely uncommercial – ‘Nightingale‘ is unfathomably pretty, as is the carefree, late night coffee shop feel of ‘Gold‘ or the dreamlike soundscapes of ‘Half Light‘, but it’s certainly a brave attempt to do something very different to everything else in their already impressive canon.
What I will say is that this record improves beyond belief if you sit at home alone and listen to it through your headphones. It’s quite an expansive, emotive set of songs that perhaps may not quite register in the way intended, without such technology. And when I say ‘songs’, it’s probably more accurate to say ‘pieces’ – these aren’t compositions destined to become earworms in any shape or form (save for ‘Nightingale‘). Indeed, the many instrumental digressions often make you feel like you’re lying in a flotation tank. That’s how relaxing it is.
When you realise that The Night seems to be an acceptance of the fact that we are no longer young – all three band members due to turn sixty, believe it or not, over the next eighteen months – it all starts to make sense, as though it’s a recognition, and acknowledgement, of the good times of our youth, while at the same time embracing the changes that come with middle age and beyond. ‘No Rush‘ in particular, is almost celestial sounding, looking to the skies in gratitude, and with hope for the future.
Indeed, Cracknell’s opening, spoken vocal on ‘Settle In’, which opens the album, muses that “When you’re 20, or 21, you have so much belief, you have so much energy and belief / Will it be gold? Tell me my fortune / Time flies. It slips and slides / All roads lead to here.” It’s beautiful in a downbeat way, and I don’t think anyone can deny that what she says is true. Although to be fair, I’m way more confident now than I was when I was 20!
So yeah, it’s an odd one for me, this. At first, I was extremely disappointed with this release, but persevere (and don’t play it in the bloody car, unless you’re driving in deserted, cavernous countryside at three in the morning), and a graceful elegance begins to emerge. Will it ever be one of my favourite Saint Etienne records? Probably not. But it’s undoubtedly quite a cinematic LP, and never anything less than listenable.
The Night is out now on Heavenly Recordings.
