ES7126 seven-inch features Saint Etienne
‘GLAD’
“I’ve always believed that we’ve been very true to ourselves and what we like,” says Saint Etienne singer Sarah Cracknell. “And more than anything, I wanted us to finish on a high, rather than dribbling out. I thought it would be so brilliant to have one last record that’s really amazing.”
You’ll have to wait until September for Heavenly Recordings to put out Saint Etienne’s farewell album, ‘International’, which sees Sarah and her bandmates Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs returning to their pop roots, but in the meantime we’re giving the opening track an exclusive vinyl release on the A-side of this month’s Electronic Sound seven-inch. ‘Glad’ combines bittersweet optimism with irresistibly sassy beats – and it’s a corker.
“Don’t it make you glad / When the sun shines in your eyes?” sings Sarah, in a chorus set to melt tarmac-coated hearts all summer long. The track is a collaboration with Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers and Doves guitarist Jez Williams, the former an old friend from the days when Saint Etienne’s record label held a weekly meet-up in a central London pub.
“We’ve known the Chemicals for a long time, going back to the Heavenly Sunday Social Club at The Albany,” explains Sarah. “They were the DJs there, although they were still called The Dust Brothers at that time.”
“They were so refreshing because they played different stuff to everyone else,” adds Pete. “We kept bumping into them at festivals. And weddings.”
“I just messaged Tom and said, ‘Have you got any tracks that would suit us?’,” continues Sarah. “He said, ‘Well, actually, I have’. It was something that he’d already been working on with Jez. He sent it over and it had these spectacular chords, so I wrote some new verses and we put it all together. I’m thrilled with it.”
‘ONLY LOVE CAN BREAK YOUR HEART’
The B-side of our seven-inch is Saint Etienne’s awesome reworking of Neil Young’s ’Only Love Can Break Your Heart’, which was released as the band’s debut single in May 1990. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, at this point the only two members, recorded the track with producer Ian Catt, who has worked with the group countless times since then.
“We hadn’t written any songs, so we did a couple of covers,” remembers Bob. “One of them was ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ and the other was ‘Let’s Kiss And Make Up’ by The Field Mice.”
“We had a lot of help from Ian Catt and a few other friends,” notes Pete. “It was recorded in Ian’s bedroom studio, which was in his mum and dad’s council house.”
The vocals were provided by Moira Lambert, the singer with folk-tinged shoegazers Faith Over Reason, while the fabulous bassline was played by Harvey Williams from Another Sunny Day. The track found a champion in Jeff Barrett, then the publicist for the likes of New Order, Happy Mondays and The KLF, who made it the second release on his Heavenly imprint.
“I played it to Jeff because I trusted his opinion,” explains Bob. “I had it on a Walkman and we sat in a pub in Shepherd’s Bush while he listened to it all the way through. Four-and-a-half minutes is a very long time when you are waiting for somebody to say something! But then he said, ‘I’m starting a record label, can I put this out?’. And that was it.”
Has Neil Young ever revealed what he thinks of the track?
“Someone recently told us that he likes it,” says Pete. “But did you know about Nicky Campbell smashing the vinyl live on his radio show? He was so incensed that he took the record off and broke it in half!”
