Saint Etienne are working on the follow-up to their 2020 album ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’.
The LP saw the group make a sensational return to the UK Top 20 for the first time in more than 20 years, with the concept piece set between 1997 and 2001, containing samples of pop songs from this time along with related field recordings.
The ambient LP is the band’s most experimental to date but proved a surprise hit, peaking at No. 14 in the charts and securing the group their highest placement since ‘Tiger Bay’ some 26 years prior.
However, it wasn’t the initial plan; in 2019, the group was working on an entirely different project under the title ‘When Our Love Was New’, with Bob confirming the record remains in the vault, “basically done – it just needed a bit of mixing,” but he isn’t sure they’ll revisit the tracks anytime soon. “I think we definitely want to do something new,” he insists. “It would be nice to do something a bit more upbeat quite soon. Also, you never know how many more chances you’re going to get to do something!”
He laughs: “Sorry, that’s a bleak thought! But you know, one of us might not be able to or Sarah might not want to sing anymore. You never know; you can’t really take these things for granted. I’m always thinking, ‘What would we want to do next?’ and it would definitely be good to do something more uptempo at some point. If not the next record then the one after that.”
As he hints towards at least two more Saint Etienne albums, does that mean work is already underway on their next project? “We’ve been working on quite a lot of stuff. We’ve got a lot of demos and it’s a question of what we do with them, really,” Bob teases, adding, “I’d like to think we’ll certainly be recording an album this year.”
In the meantime, the trio are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their 1998 album ‘Good Humor’ with a celebratory vinyl reissue – and Bob admits it’s a personal favourite from their catalogue.
“It’s a really good collection of songs – probably our strongest collection of songs,” he smiles, “and it stands apart from the rest of our albums because of the way it sounds. But I have really fond memories of it and I can’t really separate the music from the memories of recording it. It was a really good time in my life. And Lose That Girl, Split Screen… there’s a lot of songs we still play live. Apart from ‘Foxbase Alpha’, probably more than any other album…”
The LP arrived four years after ‘Tiger Bay’ and, in the years between, they’d scored their most successful single to date with He’s On The Phone; but instead of continuing down that path with their new material the trio opted for a different sound altogether as they began working on tracks for what would become ‘Good Humor’.
“All three of us found Britpop and the flag waving around that fairly obnoxious,” muses Bob. “I think it’s pretty obvious to anybody who actually got us that yeah, we might have written a lot of songs about London, but we were very international in our outlook. So recording an album in Sweden with loads of comic book Americana references was us intentionally not doing whatever Blur were doing in 1997.”
Despite a four-year break between albums, work on ‘Good Humor’ – featuring the singles Sylvie and The Bad Photographer – began long before it was released; according to the hitmaker, he and Pete started working on tracks a year before they headed to Tambourine Studios in Malmö, Sweden, where they teamed up with The Cardigans collaborator Tore Johansson, who produced the LP.
“The songs were basically all written in advance and we took demos with us, which is the only time we’ve done that, really,” he reflects. “We normally just go in with some very sketchy ideas and work on them in the studio, but since we hadn’t worked with Tore before we got a bit more prepared.
“It was recorded in three weeks and mixed in three weeks – and that was it. Because we had all the songs ready before we went in, apart from most of the lyrics, which we always leave until the end. So we finished them off in the studio and that was it.”
‘Good Humor’ is reissued on Green and White Splatter Vinyl on Heavenly on February 10 and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the February 2023 edition of RETROPOP, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
