FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying to Tell You
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THERE are a few reasons…
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Melek Zertal
why I want to feature Saint Etienne’s I've Been Trying to Tell You in this Revisiting… For one, the tenth studio album from the legendary London band is among their very best. It shows they are one of the most consistent and inventive groups of their generation. Also, this album was released on 10th September, 2021, and it did get great reviews. I don’t think it is played and talked about as much as it should be. Also, as it was released during the pandemic, maybe it denied Saint Etienne the opportunity to promote and tour it in full. An album that should not pass anyone by, I also like I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, because it makes direct reference to music of the late-’90s. In terms of its concept and act, it is an album set between the ‘optimistic’ years of 1997 and 2001. It contains samples of Pop songs from this time, alongside some field recordings. Before getting to some reviews, there are a couple of interviews that I want to bring in. The band, Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs discussed the inspirations behind I’ve Been Trying to Tell You. They spoke with The Guardian in September 2021 about COVID-19, in addition to British music and culture in the ‘90s:
“I’m Trying to Tell You’s hazy musical style is influenced by something unexpected: YouTube videos made by younger people Stanley became obsessed with a few years ago. “It was this warped, woozy music like chillwave or vaporwave, but it’s mostly samples of 80s American music, set against stills of abandoned shopping malls. There are virtually no records or CDs [of this music] – it’s all on YouTube and it definitely seems outside of the conventional music industry, which I find fascinating.”
Stanley is the band’s resident pop geek, publishing acclaimed books (including 2014’s whip-smart history of pop, Yeah, Yeah Yeah, and this year’s Excavate!: The Wonderful and Frightening History of the Fall, co-edited with his partner, artist and writer Tessa Norton, as well as compiling crate-digging anthologies with Wiggs. Some might accuse him of wallowing too much in the past, but he’s not having that. “I don’t think it’s nostalgic to be fascinated by the Chartists or the Bauhaus, or the Beatles for that matter. It’s about history.” It’s also about having a modernist approach to creativity, he says. “And my understanding of modernism is that it’s about borrowing the best bits of the past when you’re creating something new. That’s how you progress. ‘Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat’ as Neil Tennant said in Left to My Own Devices. You can’t ignore history.”
When Covid hit, the band struck on the idea of taking samples from a period currently being referred to by younger artists such as Charli XCX and AG Cook. Cracknell loves the resulting album: “It’s all hazy, late summer sounds – and it was so nice to do something like this during multiple lockdowns, and so nice to see each other, even if it was only on Zoom.” She recorded her vocals in her son’s bedroom; Wiggs worked at home, as did Stanley, but later hooked up with composer Gus Bousfield, who contributed to two tracks. They decided to look at the less well-know styles songs that were actually all over the radio in the late 1990s – styles far removed from indie and Britpop. “Because it frustrates us how history gets rewritten,” Stanley says. “That’s part of the theme of this record – it’s an attempt to reclaim memory.”
IN THIS PHOTO: Bob Stanley, Sarah Cracknell and Pete Wiggs in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Rasic/Getty Images
The idea of reappraising our received version of the 1990s is something the band have often discussed. Stanley says he finds it odd that “Britpop people have taken over the music bits of the BBC… ex-members of various bands being presenters or whatever. That doesn’t help what we remember.” What was exciting then, he says, was rave, hardcore and breakbeat, jungle and drum and bass, music that was developing constantly. “Every couple of months there was something new. It was constantly evolving.” We discuss the famous cover of Select magazine in 1993 that first introduced Britpop as a concept: Saint Etienne were one of the bands. “It had us, Pulp, Denim, Suede and the Auteurs as well – we all sounded completely different. By the time Britpop became big, that sound was much more homogeneous and by 1997 it was quite dreary – and suddenly everyone was splintering off into different things.”
What do the band think of the argument that Britpop – and its fetishisation of Britishness – was one of the building blocks towards Brexit? Wiggs nods wearily; Cracknell offers a theatrically miserable shrug. “You can definitely see things within the stereotypes of Britpop that tie those things together,” Stanley says. “It snuck certain associations into popular culture.”
The album also explores a time where Britain last felt optimistic, they say, although it was tempered by disillusion even shortly after New Labour was elected. “We must be near the bottom of it for politics now, though,” says Stanley.
Cracknell and Wiggs have kids in their late teens who are fascinated by the 1990s (Stanley is merely an observer of this phenomenon: his son with his partner, Norton, is only five). I wonder if they cling to that period because it takes them to a mysterious world just before they were born – so close to them, in a way, but also so out of touch. “It’s a bit like us having a fascination for the 60s at a similar age, just in a different way,” Cracknell says. “I mean, for us, the 90s seems like yesterday, but for them, it seems like a really, really long time ago”.
Before getting to those reviews, there is an interview from PASTE that caught my eye. In it, the band’s superb lead Sarah Cracknell was asked about the album and living through the pandemic. There are a couple of sections of the interview that I wanted to bring in. One answer suggested that Saint Etienne might have another album coming along soon:
“Paste: Your new album title I’ve Been Trying to Tell You works on several levels. For years in my writing, I’ve been quoting everything from the book Ishmael to climate-change headlines to underscore the fact that man, in thinking he’s the end product of evolution, has basically doomed himself to extinction. And there will be no safe place to run that’s free from fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and coastal erosion. We’ve been trying to tell you.
Cracknell: Oh yeah. I know this woman, she’s really lovely, and she’s got younger kids. But her 14-year-old teenage boy, she found him crying his eyes out, and she was going, “What’s the matter?” And it was all about how frightened he was about the future, and about climate change and about wars and the pandemic and the government. It was horrible, and my friend said she wished she’d never had the news on. I mean, you put the news on and you think that your children are not absorbing it, but this kid was. And she felt so sorry for him, but she said, “What can I tell him?” And there was another hurricane in New Orleans, and a million people without power, and they’d only just got their shit back together, you know? It’s awful. Boy, this is really a doom-y conversation!
Paste: So you were just getting lost in bygone Britpop-era reverie on this album, basically? Back when Labour was in, Boris wasn’t.
Cracknell: Yeah, exactly. I think we were just thinking about how you can get into the idea that there was this great change, and with it brilliant things are going to happen! And some really good things did happen, but not everything we expected happened. So it’s about optimism, but optimism that’s a little bit unfounded, you know? And you kind of remember the good bits and that feeling. So the album is about sort of misremembering things.
Paste: So there’s another nearly finished Saint Etienne album in the pipeline then?
Cracknell: Yeah. And I’d say, to be realistic about it, it’s probably 2/3 of the way there. But now I think we might even get those songs and rethink how we want to approach it. Because—and this is just me talking, and I think Bob would agree with me—I don’t think it’s necessarily the right thing to do to suddenly go back to really full-formed songs again. I think some kind of segue, some kind of hybrid of the two things might be good. I don’t know—we’ll see. If we even get to do another record, that is. Who knows?
Paste: Did you come out of the whole experience cheered up? Reinvigorated?
Cracknell: Yeah, actually! Yeah! I think we did. Right around track four, I was thinking, “This is great! I love this!” And even the grumpy old manager, my husband, said, “This is great!” And he doesn’t normally say things like that, you know. And then because Alasdair was involved, after we’d done about three or four songs, he was sending us stuff that he had made to go with the songs, and it was really exciting. I mean to have someone as creative as he is, and who gets us as much as he does, sending us these beautiful images and beautiful sections of films, it was really exciting”.
I will put in a review from CLASH. I’ve Been Trying to Tell You received positive reviews across the board. From such a remarkable band, their 2021 album ranked alongside their very best. This is what CLASH had to say in their review:
“As literally nobody says: if you can remember the late 90s, then you weren’t really there. At the time, the period seemed to take on a beatific, easy-going glow in the eyes of the media – the Britpop party had ended but the confidence remained, while Labour’s history-making victory seemed to remove the Tory menace forever. Looking back, emotions are mixed: the art that emerged from the late 90s often feels flat, saccharine, lacking any kind of counter cultural edge; Labour – New Labour – failed to invoke radical change in this country, largely allowing the achievements that did emerge to rest on market forces.
‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ digs into this period. It’s an odd choice – there’s nothing so strange as the recent past, and Saint Etienne choose to linger in between gilded memory and unvarnished reality, somehow invoking both across eight songs that always feel uneasy, always feel engaging, and rarely feel anything else but exemplary.
Their first sample-based record since 1993’s ‘So Tough’, the album draws on a mosaic of sounds from that pre-9/11 period of trans-Atlantic optimism. Re-adjusting sonic traits more familiar with Zero 7, All Saints bangers, and T4 idents into transportive works of art isn’t an easy feat, but the production on ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ is simply stunning. ‘Music Again’ slows down the chimes of an acoustic guitar into a grinding sense of introspection; ‘I Remember It Well’ seems to open out into a hauntological faux-90s landscape, reminiscent of Forest Swords’ hinterland dreams.
That oft-overused word ‘cinematic’ comes to mind – there’s an accompanying full-length film incoming, constructed by Alasdair McLennan – but only because Saint Etienne’s songwriting is so rich in atmosphere and suggestion. Even at its most left-field – the strange, warped trip-hop elements of ‘Pond House’ push the coffee table into the incinerator – there’s a knack for melody and accessibility that simply cannot be denied.
With a sonic palette bathed in artificiality, Saint Etienne seem to pick apart the plastic, to illuminate the flesh underneath. The slomo progression of ‘Penlop’ drags you into an aural torpor, while ‘Little K’ inverts on-hold muzak to simultaneously embody, cherish, and thoroughly pierce the sense of stasis so many have found in the Blair era.
A record that feels sharply removed from 2012’s glossy ‘Words And Music By Saint Etienne’ and the more autobiographical ‘Home Counties’ (2017), ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ reaches for the inexpressible. When words fail them – much of the record is instrumental – sounds somehow take up the taxonomy, falling mid-way between a dream state and waking. A hugely impressive achievement, ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ is technically exquisite, while remaining incredibly difficult to pin down. A project to bathe in, rather than simply enjoy.
8/10”.
The final review I want to bring in is from AllMusic. They were hugely positive and enthusiastic when it came to I’ve Been Trying to Tell You. Even though the album does lean heavily on British culture, it still did very well in other countries. I have seen American reviews that are very glowing and enthusiastic. It is an album that everyone needs to get involved with:
“From the beginning of their long career, Saint Etienne have excelled at bringing together nostalgia and futurism in one stylish package that has always felt fresh, no matter how many old parts were salvaged in the creation process. Along the way, many of their most memorable moments have come about on the dancefloor, whether a glittering new wave disco or a past-its-prime Northern Soul discotheque. Looking past the shiny surfaces, it was always clear that the trio have just as much skill at crafting heartbreakingly pretty ballads that could be as epic as "Avenue", elegiac as "Teenage Winter", or painful as "Hobart Paving." After a couple of records in the 2010s that were bright and shiny examples of disco-driven pop at its best, the band have shifted gears dramatically to delve exclusively into their sadder, softer side. 2021's I've Been Trying to Tell You is a concept album that looks to extract the optimistic sound of late '90s mainstream pop and twist it into a suite of songs that feel like the half-remembered afterimages of a dream.
Built around samples of artists like Tasmin Archer, Lighthouse Family, Lightning Seeds, and Honeyz, to name a few, the band snatch little bits of acoustic guitar, strings, and keyboards, add their own instrumentation, then drape snatches of vocals over the top. The end results aren't songs as much as they are moods, or dub-like versions of songs that never existed. The circular melodies spin around like a record on a turntable, the keyboards drift and swell like ships lost at sea, and Sarah Cracknell sings like she's making up bits of songs to be sung only to herself. It's mesmerizing and peaceful, uplifting and heartbreaking all at once, especially when the revolving sounds resolve into something resembling a chorus, as on "Penlop" when all the elements of the song come together, and the melody breaks through like the sun on a cloud-filled afternoon. "Pond House," too, comes alive when the Natalie Imbruglia vocal sample shifts into a wonky synth bass breakdown, then slides back into a hazy swoon that plays on and on. There are moments like this throughout the album as the band mixes sounds like mod scientists to come up with something magical. While early albums sought a similar sample-based path that often deviated into eddies of calm despair, the band have never dived in as deeply as they do on I've Been Trying to Tell You. Fans of the group more interested in songs might feel short-changed at first, but further listens only intensify the cohesive power and pocket grandeur of the record. It's rare for a band to have a new idea after being together for five years, let alone thirty. That Saint Etienne not only had a brilliant idea but also made it come to life so fully and so beautifully is nothing short of miraculous”.
One of the best albums of 2021, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You is not played a lot. It is a magnificent album from the brilliant Saint Etienne. Mixing modern production with some samples from late-’90s tracks, I love that blend. For those who were growing up in that time in Britain, the album might resonate more and have a deeper meaning. For everyone else, you will fall in love with the always exquisite and original songwriting of the trio. The magnificent I’ve Been Trying to Tell You is an album that…
YOU should not ignore.