I now know that "Etienne" is French for Steven, therefore referring to Saint Steven in Acts; that Saint Etienne itself is the name of a city in France and that they have a football team there which the band named themselves after, that the "This is Radio Etienne" track at the beginning is sampling an enthusiastic discussion of the team's results that particular week or whatever. Amazing, what a little research can dig up. But at the time, I thought it was just this goofy little thing that the band sampled because it reminded them of their name. I have no complaints, you see, for it was just as good that way.
When Saint Etienne eventually finally signed to Creation and started making 'real' pop that some clueless smug local writer bastards around here finally approved of for that reasons ("Don't you love their sixties stylings? Much better than those computers!" DIE!), then I stopped caring, even though they had actually lost me bit by bit over time. Can't remember the last time I listened to Tiger Bay, even if only in its bastardized American version. But in the way back when, this came out the same day or week or something as Screamadelica, which made sense. Both records ate history and spat it back, like most do anyway, even the old ones. It's just that this didn't need to be so rockin' about it. Even the keyboards in the one photo had the sign "This machine kills lawyers," which I like to assume refers to sampling technology, maybe. I enjoy the pose much better than Guthrie's, frankly, and he never wore gold lame suits like Bpb Stanley and Pete Wiggs did.
Of course part of the joke of this album, which I'm going to call a concept album about being around London and somehow being hip, I guess (I mean, how else are you going to explain "Wilson," much less a song title like "London Belongs to Me" or "Nothing Can Stop Us"), is that the big splash single was sung by somebody else, and whatever did happen to Moira Lambert anyway? But leaving "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" aside (but why would you want to, when it sounds so good and gently swinging?), Sarah Cracknell is the ice princess who isn't, actually quite warm, just relaxed about it. Thus she can sing "She's the One," as she does, and sound even more like a government functionary than, say, anyone in Stereolab.
It's all lush sixties pop before Austin Powers finally ruined everything, I guess, and techno that's more house and perhaps more garage, I don't know. All I do know is that they were happy with their tech and used it to imagine a more equipped Swinging London time, which is probably a good thing, because what bugs me about some recollections is the realization that back then they didn't have such nice things as samplers and Rolands and had to spend all this time actually recording things played by people who thought they were geniuses as a result. How boring! And then all these indie noises (collaborating with the Field Mice on "Kiss and Make Up," for a start -- and a great song it is too) and David Mamet samples and float and fun and play even while "Like the Swallow" actually sounds like the slow grind of death with Cracknell's voice being the last bit of sunlight. I like that. Did they plan it all that way, I wonder?
Quite why "Dilworth's Theme" actually sounds like a live rehearsal with room echo I'm not sure.