Saint Etienne Samples Y2K Pop and Name-drops Racehorses on I’ve Been Trying to Tell You LP

Photo Credit: Elaine Constantine

Prior to the U.K.’s COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, Saint Etienne had been working on a new album inside a small, London recording studio. The album (which, by singer Sarah Cracknell’s estimates, was about two-thirds complete) was put on hold with the onset of the pandemic. In the meantime, the long-running indie pop trio got sidetracked with a socially-distanced musical experiment – and before long, a whole new concept album emerged. 

“We didn’t know what the end product would be,” says Pete Wiggs on a recent Zoom call from his home studio in Hove. “We weren’t thinking this would be another album.” And yet, that’s exactly what it became.

I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, out September 10, is the tenth full-length album from the British trio. In the 31 years that have passed since Saint Etienne’s first single, a cover of Neil Young’s song “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” the group has forged a path that crosses indie pop, dance, and experimental electronic music. They’ve moved dance floors with songs like “Nothing Can Stop Us” and “He’s on the Phone,” garnered critical acclaim for albums like Sound of Water (2000) and Words and Music By Saint Etienne (2012) and have kept diehards hooked with their fan club releases and other limited edition material. 

One of those rare releases – specifically a 2018 EP called Surrey North – serves as a precursor of sorts for I’ve Been Trying to Tell You. Wiggs had wanted to further some of the production techniques used in the making of the EP. “I got some new toys, some new software, that I wanted to explore,” he says. 

The concept, though, came from Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley. Wiggs explains that Stanley had wanted to use samples from a specific period of the 1990s and to pull from releases that were fairly popular at the time. Ultimately, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You includes barely-recognizable snippets of hits from artists Natalie Imbruglia, Samantha Mumba, The Lightning Seeds and others. 

“We got really into it and then Sarah did some vocals on quite a few and it became something bigger,” says Wiggs. At one point, they realized that they had grown more fond of this project than the album they had been recording pre-pandemic. 

Saint Etienne worked on the songs remotely, with Wiggs in Hove, Cracknell in Oxfordshire and Stanley in West Yorkshire. Cracknell recorded vocals with her son as engineer and sent the pieces to Wiggs. “I wouldn’t necessarily know where they would go, so I could pick and choose and treat them like samples in a way and chop this out and play around with it,” he says. 

Cracknell, too, says she was interested in something more “atmosphere-led” rather than focusing on the lyrics. “I thought that it would be nice to have something where you imagine something, a bit cinematic, in your mind,” she says. There’s also a nod to the Cocteau Twins in her approach for this album. “I’m a bit of Cocteau Twins fan and I like that Liz Fraser used to make up words and things, her own vocabulary, so I have a bit of that as well,” says Cracknell. 

The samples are primarily culled from music released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a conceptual decision that reflects the theme of the album. “The concept behind that was that it was a period where the Tony Blair government had come in,” says Wiggs. “Initially, everyone was very excited and optimistic about things. Then, it all sort of went wrong with various wars and things like that. Big business still being involved. It wasn’t as great as we thought it was going to be.”

The songs are all named after horses who ran in the Grand National race between the years 1996 and 1998, which parallels the historical reflection. “There’s a sense of optimism with betting on a horse, but it often goes tits up,” Wiggs points out.

Photographer Alasdair McLellan created a film to accompany the album, and both are a poignant reflection upon memory at a time when the music and fashion surrounding the turn of the 21st century has come back in vogue. “I suppose that I think that there’s a lot of looking back and referencing those years in popular music now, especially here – lots of people are doing songs that sound like they’re from that period and it’s influenced a lot of people,” says Wiggs.

He adds, “Bob was saying that kids maybe think of it as being all great back then.” Wiggs contemplates the possibility that Saint Etienne, at one point, may have felt the same way about the music and culture of the 1960s. 

“I think that we’ve always tried to make music that reflects stuff that we like and we’re really into music from the past, but we’re always trying to make something new,” he says. Wiggs notes the advent of 21st century technologies that allow producers to closely mimic the sounds of old soul records. “Sometimes it feels like that’s a bit of a pastiche,” he says, “but, maybe, in the ‘90s, if we were able to do that, we would have done that.”

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Babygirl Speaks to the Angsty Teen in All of Us on Debut EP Losers Weepers

Photo Credit: Kate Dockeray

In a time when Taylor Swift is in the midst of re-releasing her entire catalogue, nostalgia is reigning supreme. Millennials long for the days of screaming “Love Story” with the windows down on the way to soccer practice or crying into their diary to “You Belong With Me.” Let’s face it, high school sucks, but it’s looking a lot better than most of our current situations. Toronto-based duo Babygirl harnesses that same raw Y2K teen pop magic on their debut EP, Losers Weepers. 

Kiki Frances and Cameron Breithaupt bring combined influences of Hillary Duff, blink-182, Kelly Clarkson and Alvvays to create self-aware underdog pop for the angsty adolescent in all of us; although their melodies are soaked in nostalgia, their lyrics contain a contemporary exhaustion that feels all too familiar. “Nevermind” encapsulates the residual saltiness that comes with the aftermath of a one-sided relationship. Frances sings, “Thought we were both in the deep-end/But you’re only in town for the weekend,” capturing the non-committal aura surrounding most people in their 20’s. The sun-drenched chorus feels like the sonic child of Sheryl Crow and Avril Lavigne, reminding the listener not to take anyone or anything too serious. “We made an effort to offset some of the bummer lyrics by making the productions playful and sweet, almost hopeful. We always want to make it feel bittersweet,” says the pair.

While most of the songs hover around the context of love lost or found, “Million Dollar Bed” also incorporates a reflection on the futility of chasing money or fame in search of happiness. The lyrics paint a picture of a heartbroken soul replacing love with possessions: “Chasing a daydream to forget we ever happened/Pretty distractions/I’ll be happy when I have them.” This is a deeply relatable sentiment for someone (me) who has turned to online shopping as a coping mechanism during the pandemic, hoping the next box will be the one to restore peace and balance in life. 

There is not a line on this record that isn’t perfectly crafted to stick to your brain like that awkward thing you said in 2007. It makes sense, then, that Frances and Breithaupt met in music school and bonded over their obsession with making top 40 music. “We had similar tastes when it came to pop music and that made us want to try working together,” says Frances. “We were just like, how do we write a hit song? You seem to care as much as me. Let’s figure it out,” adds Breithaupt. The band explains that they have to agree on every part of a song for it to make it out of demo-mode, which makes for a long and sometimes arduous writing process. But despite their calculated approach to writing, Babygirl’s songs don’t come off as try-hard or cringe, but more like a conversation you’d have with your best friend, or yourself.

In “Today Just Isn’t My Day,” Babygirl presents a familiar internal monologue — “I’m all out of steam/I’m all out of weed/Today just isn’t my day.” The song allows the listener to stew in self pity while reminding them not to stay there forever. Simple guitars, percussion bells and wells of strings keep the song from feeling too dark, like laying in bed all day in a sunny room. If the band’s organic arrangements set them apart from most modern popstar hopefuls, their intuitive melodies are what bring them back to center. 

One of the earliest physical copies of an album I remember having was a cassette of Backstreet Boys’ Millennium. That was definitely melodically really important for me,” says Breithaupt. The band recreates the accessible lyrics and melodies of late ’90s, early 2000s pop while leaving most of the melodrama behind. There’s something about hyper-cute lyrics sung in a nonchalant falsetto that just works, and Babygirl seems to get that. Although, their “dream band” would not be as low key:  “Let’s just take Coldplay, make Lindsay Lohan the lead singer, have Ne-Yo write the songs, have Kanye executive produce them, and call it a day,” says Babygirl.

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