Saint Etienne have confirmed plans to release their new album in late 2024. 

The group returned to the Top 20 of the UK charts for the first time in over two decades with their most recent LP, ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ (2021), and in an exclusive interview for RETROPOP’s February cover feature Bob Stanley confirms their next release will be a sequel. 

“We’re finishing a new album at the moment, which is gonna come out in the autumn, so I hope it sounds alright and not completely dated by then,” he says. “But we thought the last album [‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’ (2021)] sounded like nothing we’ve done before and people were saying, ‘Oh, it’s great, you’re going back to how you used to sound’, so I don’t know…”

Revealing the project is one of two records the band is working on concurrently, he adds: “We’re recording two albums at the same time – one of which is more mainstream and one of which is a follow-up to the last one. 

“A lot of people really liked the last one, which I was very pleased about, and it went into the Top 20, which we haven’t done since the ‘90s. So we thought we’d look to take that to the next step and at the same time, so we don’t all just fall asleep, we thought we’d try and write some uptempo songs. 

“So we’ve probably got about half a dozen uptempo tracks, which will probably be the album after, I guess…”