Chart entered : 18 May 1991
Chart peak : 53
Number of hits : 23
I've always been a bit baffled by this lot. One of my best mates is really into them and they just seem at odds with everything else he likes, making me think there must be some depth to them that I'm not seeing. Perhaps it's just that they were getting favourable coverage in the NME when he first started buying it.
Saint Etienne were formed in 1988 by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs who were childhood friends in Croydon. Bob is precisely two days younger than me which is no doubt why I can usually identify their pop cultural references easily. Bob started out working in record shops and began creating fanzines in the mid eighties including one with Pete called Caff. This led to work for the NME from 1987 to 1989 when he switched to Melody Maker. That same year he started the Caff record label. Saint Etienne were named after the French football team best known for a tempestuous European Cup Winners Cup tie with Manchester United in 1977. The duo's basic idea was to combine contemporary club music with sixties pop tropes using a variety of mainly female vocalists as neither fancied singing.
Their recording career started in 1990 with an unlikely cover of Neil Young's first solo hit in the US , "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" , which he reportedly wrote about Graham Nash's break-up with Joni Mitchell. The formerly acoustic ballad was set to a dub bassline, funky drumming and house keyboard riff not too dissimilar to Beats International. The chosen vocalist was Moira Lambert from obscure shoegazing band Faith Over Reason whose wan, inexpert singing emphasises the D.I,Y nature of the recording. The track features a sped up sample of drums from Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks. Radio One's Nicky Campbell smashed the record on air in outrage at their treatment which is as good a recommendation as you could hope for and the record did become a club hit. Having said that, it washes in one ear and out the other for me. It became their second hit on re-release in 1991 reaching number 39. It was one of the first releases on the Heavenly record label.
The second single was "Kiss and Make Up" a song originally recorded by an obscure indie group The Field Mice whose Michael Hiscock was a drinking pal. It was originally recorded with Lambert but they later decided to replace her vocal with one from Donna Savage of equally obscure New Zealand ex-pats Dead Famous People. It's stunningly vacuous, a nebulous song with back-of-a-fag packet lyrics with possibly the most boring one finger piano riff ever. Nevertheless it got them that bit closer to the chart. The B-side "Sky's Dead" was their first self-written effort.
For this, their third single, they alighted on Sarah Cracknell , suggested by Bob's girlfriend Celina. She's routinely described as an actress but in truth she'd just finished a year at drama school and had only a walk-on-part in Maureen Lipman vehicle About Face to her credit. She'd also sung on a couple of obscure dance tracks. They invited her to join the band almost straight away. "Nothing Can Stop Us" is an original song by Bob and Pete but is based on a looped sample of a flute and trumpet motif from a Dusty Springfield song I Can't Wait To See My Baby's Face. It also incorporates a snatch of dialogue from Allan Surtees in the 1969 film The Reckoning, a drama about social mobility starring Nicol Williamson. Sarah does two over-lapping vocals, a sugary croon and a spoken word recital of complimentary lyrics. The pop element is slightly stronger than the club on this one which makes it a bit more interesting to me and probably accounts for it making the chart but I still can't get too excited about it.
Never quite understood these lot, putting it mainly down to music hacks backing one of their own. That said, I did quite like their version "Only Love..."
ReplyDelete"Let's Kiss and Make Up" is one of the Field Mice's weaker efforts, in large part due to that wretched 50p drum machine beat. Not heard these lot's version of it, not sure I can be bothered.