Breathless Composure

I am late for everything, and hearing new music that is 8 months old is no different. I love the occaisional sprinkling of Saint Etienne: I never feast on them, but every once in a while when partial, I can't get enough of their flirtatious melodies - a style that projects beyond the mundane and into kitchen-sink kitsch bliss. The supernatural promenade trance of Avenue is a good example of their self-aware juxtoposition of beauty and elegance with blatant crapness, formed by imagination alone. A more literal trance offering was their Paul van Dyk collaboration Tell Me Why, which remains their highest credited chart placing at number 7.

They hit their commercial peak in 1995 with the unforgettably romantic He's On The Phone, a collaboration with Gina G's nemesis Steve Roadway, and have never struck a chord with UK radio or record buyers since.

In 2009, a spirited return to the UK top 40 looked irresistably iminent with their sugar-fused Richard X collaboration Method of Modern Romance (a verse dedicated to gaydar was curiously absent). Sarah Cracknell's vocals are technically limited and yet have their own acquired perfection: like carelessly spilled red wine, they stain forever. Suffice to say, the syngeing electronic tingles dangling together with Cracknell's breathless composire made a heroic number 56 and lord knows if these forces shall ever combine again.

Don't Forget To Catch Me

If you thought a song called People Get Real would consist of finger-waving Jeremy Kyle sound bites and street-savvy colloquialisms then speak to the hand and get a DNA test – Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell resists the urge to holler “you ain’t my real mutha anyways” by reuniting the raddled 90s pop scene with revised 1960s kitsch so dreamy it’s beyond hallucination. Cracknell’s foamy and breathlessly quiff-like cooing won’t worry Whitney, but does the job wonderfully with her menacingly sweet abilities, as on the dense melancholy of Avenue, swirling in delicious candyfloss nostalgia. Kiss & Make Up sung by Donna Savage floats ashore giving you memories you never had in the first place.

Counteracting these warm tones of lush promenade promise, the stoic disco coping strategy Like A Motorway is a lucid account of detached echoing grief – Cracknells cracked façade absorbs into the lurid Moroder bass line like ink bleeding onto paper, with the untouchable fluid fatality of reading a suicide note mirrored to the greediness of an intrusive newspaper headline. Her frozen horror fades into the horizon but with lingering calculation.

Further on in their discography, the cosy “hold tight” stargazing flight of Stars Above Us gave the group their best chance of a hit single since the Motiv8 rampage He’s On The Phone. With a possible dance project igniting the rumour mill perhaps once more they are on the cusp to deliver disorientated pop perfection all over again.

People Get Real

Kiss & Make Up

Avenue

Like A Motorway

Stars Above Us (Eric Kupper Radio Remix)