St. Etienne - The mashup of 90s Dance and 60s Pop. And the two see eye to eye.
Saint Etienne – Glastonbury 2022 – Past Daily Soundbooth: Festival Edition
St. Etienne – Live at Glastonbury 2022 – Recorded and Broadcast live – June 24, 2022 – BBC6 Music –
A few more visits to Glastonbury 2022 before heading off to the other Festivals spreading all over Europe this Summer – a lot going on – breathing a lot of sighs of relief. Summer is the time for Music; lots of it, running the gamut and filling the soul – there are possibilities and hopes are high. Grab a ticket or pick a stream and dive in.
Tonight it’s Saint Etienne, recorded and broadcast live on June 24th by the venerable and top-notch BBC 6 Music engineers.
AllMusic’s Tim Sendra offers some insights on Saint Etienne – here’s a sample:
The origins of Saint Etienne date back to the early ’80s, when childhood friends Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs began making party tapes together in their hometown of Croydon, Surrey, England. After completing school, the pair worked various jobs — most notably, Stanley was a music journalist — before deciding to concentrate on a musical career in 1988. Adopting the name Saint Etienne from the French football team of the same name, the duo moved to Camden, where they began recording with the help of producer/engineer Ian Catt. By the beginning of 1990, the pair had signed a record contract with the indie label Heavenly. In the spring of 1990, Saint Etienne released their first single, a house-tinged cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” which featured lead vocals from Moira Lambert of the indie pop band Faith Over Reason. The song became an underground hit, getting a fair amount of airplay in nightclubs across England, especially after receiving a coveted Andrew Weatherall remix. Later in the year, Saint Etienne released their second single, a cover of the indie pop group Field Mice’s “Let’s Kiss and Make Up,” which was sung by Donna Savage of the New Zealand band Dead Famous People. Like its predecessor, “Kiss and Make Up” was an underground hit, helping set the stage for “Nothing Can Stop Us.” Released in the spring of 1991, the song was the first Saint Etienne single sung by Sarah Cracknell, who had been in a number of indie bands and sang on a track by Lovecut DB.
In 2020, with COVID finding it impossible to work together on music, the band members recorded in their respective homes, with Stanley digging up samples in Bradford, Wiggs providing music in Hove, and Cracknell adding vocals in Oxford. They were assisted on a number of tracks by film music producer Gus Bousfield, who is also in the band Gurgles. Released in late 2021, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You set forth a melancholy, dub-influenced alternative pop universe circa the late ’90s with the assist of samples culled from songs by Natalie Imbruglia, Tasmin Archer, the Lighthouse Family, and Honeyz, among others.
They’re back – they’re live and they’re in fine form. Crank it up and dig in.
