Everyone who lived through Britpop has an Oasis story or two, and Saint Etienne are no exception. “We’d heard a demo – Live Forever. We were, like, ‘Wow, that’s really good,’” says Sarah Cracknell, the singer with the 1990s indie underdogs. “They came and supported us. You could tell something big was going to happen.”
Unlike the fractious Gallagher brothers, Saint Etienne never split and, over the past 35 years, have released cool, introspective electronica at a steady clip. Their music changes – they have at various points drawn on 1960s soul, acid house, Neil Young and Italian disco – but Saint Etienne always sounded assuredly like themselves: melodic, a bit melancholy, obsessed with everything that makes pop the greatest art form of the 20th century.
That glorious run now comes to an end with International, their 13th album, which they have announced is to be their last. Why call time now? Cracknell and her bandmate Pete Wiggs shrug, as if to say: Why not?
“It was very much our decision. Definitely the right decision. Finishing with an album like this, which is upbeat and, I think, one of our best, is good,” says Wiggs. It felt important, he continues, to make clear to fans that the record is not just a great Saint Etienne LP but also the closing chapter of their story.
“We could have put this out and just not made another one. To let people know it’s the last one, so then we’re all in it together. Our fans are in it with us. We’re going, ‘Come on – this is the last record. Let’s make this count and let’s enjoy it.’ It’s a bit sad, but it’s also great.”
From the start, Saint Etienne’s music pulsated with nostalgia: Foxbase Alpha, their debut, from 1991, references Serge Gainsbourg, while Tiger Bay, from 1994, was Kraftwerk through a bleary-eyed English filter.
Still, they’ve never been ones for gazing over their shoulders. As recently as last year they had opened a new chapter with the largely instrumental The Night, which explored themes such as insomnia and wee-hours ennui.
But now, at the end, they’re allowing themselves the luxury of looking back on their unlikely emergence as the faces of thoughtful electropop during British music’s glory days of cigarettes and alcohol.
So what was the rest of Saint Etienne’s Gallagher brothers story?
Oasis opened for the band twice in December 1993, at the Birmingham Institute and Glasgow Plaza. The Birmingham gig went off hitch-free. In Scotland, however, the synth trio’s pensive, bookish fans didn’t know what they’d let themselves in for as the Gallaghers took to the stage.
“They were great. Insanely loud. Everything was on 11,” says Cracknell. “One of the venues wasn’t that big. We were all at the back, cowering against the wall, all our little fey Saint Etienne fans. Our fans were quite literally blown away.”
We consider ourselves Europeans – but, sadly, we aren’t any more … It just feels like everything’s gone to shit
— Pete Wiggs
Saint Etienne has its roots in the lifelong friendship between the group’s founders, Wiggs and his fellow musical nerd turned pop purveyor Bob Stanley. Having met at school in Croydon, in south London, they bonded over their love of obscure music. By their early 20s they were publishing their own fanzine, Pop Avalanche, which celebrated unheralded indie heroes such as the BMX Bandits, 14 Iced Bears and Talulah Gosh.
But their outlook on art – and, in a way, life itself – changed when acid house came along in the late 1980s. It wasn’t just the music: it was also the dance scene’s DIY culture, which introduced a new generation to the punk philosophy that anyone could make music, even if, like Wiggs and Stanley at that time, you couldn’t play an instrument.
Inspired by that spirit of grassroots creativity, they started Saint Etienne as an outlet for their distinctive tastes: both very English and coolly European.
Cracknell was not initially involved – and her background could not have been more different from that of Wiggs and Stanley. She came from a starry family: her mother, Julie Samuel, had acted in the venerable UK spy drama The Avengers and in Coronation Street; her father, Derek Cracknell, was first assistant director to Stanley Kubrick, and also worked on James Cameron’s film Aliens and Tim Burton’s Batman.
He died in 1991, at the age of just 55, as Cracknell was trying to establish herself as a singer. Around this time she was put in contact with Wiggs and Stanley, who were recording Foxbase Alpha in a council house belonging to their producer’s parents.
She sang on much of the album, though not the title track, a cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart. Still, she, Wiggs and Stanley had musical chemistry, and by the time of So Tough, their 1993 album, Saint Etienne had found its definitive line-up as a trio.
That year they made their debut on Top of the Pops, although, as Stanley recently explained, the episode is unlikely ever to air again. “It also featured Rolf Harris singing Stairway to Heaven. It was only after Harris was convicted that Sarah told me and Pete he had squeezed her bum painfully hard when no one was looking,” he wrote in the London Times recently. “She had never mentioned it before because she thought no one would have wanted their ‘cuddly Rolf’ illusions shattered.”
[ Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha: Still brilliant all these years onOpens in new window ]
With International, Saint Etienne are bowing out on a high. The album captures what fans love about the band: the Kraftwerk grooves, the melodies that twinkle like a French Eurovision entry from 1967, and Cracknell’s voice – velvety and mysterious, with a measure of studied distance.
It’s chock-a-block with guests, too, including the producer Tim Powell, of the hit factory Xenomania; Nick Heyward; and the house DJ and producer Erol Alkan. Also on board are The Chemical Brothers, old mates from Heavenly Social, the fabled Sunday club night held in the basement of the Albany pub on Great Portland Street in London in the mid-1990s, who pop up on the brilliantly bittersweet single Glad.
Cracknell and Wiggs are chipper as they talk about the end of the band. Yes, of course it’s a shame that things are drawing to a close. But they count themselves lucky: how many artists get to dictate the circumstances in which they leave the stage?
Stanley has revealed on social media that he and Wiggs were just getting Foxbase Alpha off the ground when their beloved Crystal Palace lost the 1990 FA Cup final to Manchester United. He says that they vowed at that time to carry on until Palace won the cup – which they finally did this year.
“It’s not for sad reasons. It’s not because we’ve been forced to finish,” says Wiggs. “I was slightly taken aback by some of the lovely reaction. It was beautiful. Some of the things people said, that got me crying. You just don’t realise sometimes some of the impact you’ve had – and some from journalists as well … I know they liked us … I didn’t know they liked us that much.”
Saint Etienne may have reached the end, but their label, Heavenly, remains in rude health. Its latest signings include Kneecap, the Irish-language trio whose politicised rap music feels universes removed from Saint Etienne’s contemplative pop.
Cracknell says they’re a perfect match for Heavenly, a record company that has always prioritised art over commerce.
“Their outspokenness, a lot of people don’t talk about what they’re talking about. They’re very outspoken, which is brilliant, as it should be,” she says. “I’m not surprised they’re on Heavenly at all, to be honest. It’s a really good home for them. They’ll support them all the way. What they’re saying politically aligns with the things that Heavenly believe in.”
[ Kneecap review: Rap trio give a performance for the ages at Electric Picnic 2025Opens in new window ]
The title International was chosen very deliberately, says Wiggs: the record is a love letter to internationalism and celebrating influences beyond those with which you grew up.
“A lot of [our] Englishness is just the way we talk. We’re trying to be international: we love cinema from around the world and music from everywhere. We consider ourselves Europeans – but, sadly, we aren’t any more … It just feels like everything’s gone to shit.”
Through the 1990s, and especially at the height of Britpop, Saint Etienne offered an alternative vision of what British music could be: albums such as Tiger Bay were an antidote to the escalating lairiness.
So it’s ironic that they were initially heralded as flag-wavers for the B-word, having featured prominently in the 1993 issue of Select magazine with Brett Anderson of Suede draped on the cover, accompanied by the headline “Yanks go home!”
“It was one of those things where instead of just being a lot of bands being celebrated, it turned into a sound. ‘A Britpop band sounds like this.’ And then it comes a bit corny,” says Wiggs. Cracknell nods. “That first Select cover … We all sounded completely different” – the issue also featured Pulp, The Auteurs and Denim. “Afterwards, everyone sounded the same.”
[ Pulp at 3Arena review: Jarvis Cocker, storyteller in corduroy, builds to a glorious climaxOpens in new window ]
Stanley agreed in his recent article for the Times. The early 1990s were a “playground for adventurous British pop music. House and techno grew peculiar branches that became rave, jungle, drum’n’bass and trip-hop, while kindred spirits such as Pulp, Suede, Denim and World of Twist looked to the unfashionable 1970s for inspiration as much as to the contemporary scene,” he wrote.
“Each group had their own unique take – it was terrific. When this scene mutated into Britpop and became a gold rush it was a lot less fun. Substandard soundalike bands such as The Bluetones absorbed the demand and became chart-toppers; Oasis and Blur getting pally calls from Alastair Campbell felt very un-pop and uncomfortable.”
The wheels might have started to come off when Noel Gallagher clinked Champagne flutes with Tony Blair at a Downing Street party, but they’ve been put right back on this summer with the return of Oasis, Pulp, Suede and other top-tier Britpop bands. Cracknell and Wiggs are struck by how large the 1990s loom for Gen Z.
“We’ve both got children in their late teens. For them the 1990s is a big thing,” says Wiggs. “Part of the allure, especially to my son, is the tactile stuff. Cassettes, Walkman. He loves CDs, DVDs. Although everybody loves the internet, they also kind of hate [it].”
He pauses, as if briefly caught between the past, the present and the post-Saint Etienne future that stretches ahead. “They feel that we had a sort of freedom in those days.”
International is released by Heavenly Recordings