How We Used Saint Etienne to Live

De: Ramzy Alwakeel

Narrado por: Sam Newton

The essential guide to veteran British indie favorites Saint Etienne—the story of how they made music out of memories, and how we made memories out of them.

Do you remember how we used to live? British indie favorites Saint Etienne do. But they also remember a load of other stuff that never happened, so maybe they aren’t the best people to ask.

Saint Etienne have spent three decades making music out of memories for people who make memories out of music. How We Used Saint Etienne to Live is the story of that reciprocal process, told in the wrong order, but the right time. It’s about the methods we use to remember, and what happens when those methods become outdated. It’s a tale that involves tape splicing, town planning, now compilations, and Saint Etienne’s 1995 UK singles chart peak, "He’s On The Phone".

Featuring original interviews with Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell, How We Used Saint Etienne To Live shows Saint Etienne’s minds at work as they make and manipulate history and nostalgia. Expect to be shown the receipts. Expect selective recollections and shameless revisionism. Expect concrete facts and flights of fancy. Don’t expect it to be immediately clear which is which.

©2022 Ramzy Alwakeel (P)2022 Repeater Books

Perfection

Somebody needed to write a book about Saint Etienne, and thankfully Ramzy Alwakeel has done it to perfection. He understands completely what the band is all about, and has used their music to generate a beautiful and thoughtful prose poem about the relationship between music and memory, which is of course the theme at the heart of St Etienne.

Writings about St Etienne often get bogged down in obsessing over the first two albums. The great thing about this book is that it's written by a younger person who wasn't there from the start but rather first discovered the band through He's On the Phone in 1995. It covers their entire career, giving equal time to each album, and explores in interesting ways the act of going back through the older records of a band you've recently discovered.

This feels like it will be the definitive statement on St Etienne (at least until Bob writes his own book!). Highly recommended.