'It feels like the old days...' Saint Etienne reflect on their journey and final album International
Saint Etienne's Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell spoke with Contact Music to talk about their four-decade spanning career and their 13th and final studio album International.
In October 1991, alternative dance-pop trio Saint Etienne released their debut album Foxbase Alpha, which became the first full-length LP on Jeff Barrett’s newly founded label, Heavenly Recordings. This was an ambitious move for the independent label, especially considering the massive impact Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind - released just weeks earlier - was having on the music industry at the time. The music press and major labels went all in on grunge, leaving little room for the emergence of bands like Saint Etienne, who experimented with digitally synthesized sounds and sampled dialogue from British realist films of the '60s and '70s.
In spite of the risk, the gamble paid off, and the record was well-received. Sarah Cracknell’s breathily sung vocals were cleverly woven into a collage of lush synths, deep house beats, and orchestral touches thoughtfully crafted by childhood best friends Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. The band’s 1990 cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart was their first single to chart in both the UK and the US, and went on to feature on their debut album the following year.
In 1993, as Britpop was igniting, Saint Etienne’s name appeared prominently on the front cover of Select magazine. The cover featured Suede’s Brett Anderson posing in front of a Union Jack backdrop with the bold caption “Yanks Go Home!” Alongside Saint Etienne, other key bands such as The Auteurs, Denim and Pulp were also spotlighted, marking them collectively as the new vanguard of British music reclaiming its cultural identity. In 1994, on a sunny Friday afternoon, they became the first band in history to have their Glastonbury set televised live on Channel 4.
Fast forward to September 2025, more than 35 years on from the band’s inception, Saint Etienne are wrapping things up with the release of their 13th and final studio album International. Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell spoke with Contact Music to discuss the new record and the three-and-a-half decade long journey that led to it.
The album cover for Saint Etienne's final record International
“Because this album is the final one, it gives us a chance to talk about our whole career rather than just the latest album. It’s made it easier in a way, because you’re talking about recollections from across your whole life and career, and how that relates to the new stuff … and why the hell you’re giving up, and things like that,” says Pete when asked how it feels to be doing the promotional media rounds for one last time. He further states, “It’s interesting. It’s been sort of amped up with this album. We haven’t been quite so used to doing this much promo. It feels like the old days, which is quite nice.”
Prior to forming Saint Etienne, both Pete and Bob worked as music journalists, writing for publications such as Melody Maker and numerous fan zines. Music journalism is a practice that Bob has continued this day, having also published multiple books, most notably 2013’s Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Modern Pop. The ruthlessly opinionated nature of the music press in the '90s meant that many bands were quite apprehensive towards these publications. Asked about their own experience with this, given their backgrounds, Pete says, “I think people were a bit suspicious of us initially.” He jokingly adds, “Mainly because of Bob!” Sarah nods in agreement, “Yeah, it’s Bob’s fault.”
“They thought we had some kind of masterplan. Initially we had some quite scathing reviews. The scene was very different back then, and at the time when we were starting out, a lot of music papers were more into the grunge side of things. We were bringing in samples, and mixing dance stuff with indie type stuff. Not many people had done that, so we were sort of ripe for a bit of slagging off,” Pete explains. “Foxbase Alpha had some pretty good reviews, but the next two albums were quite badly received. I’d sort of forgotten about this until I saw some cuttings recently. We’d just done the Tiger Bay album, and one of the headlines was ‘Crock of the Bay.’” They both crack up at the recollection, and Sarah adds, “I remember that So Tough was ‘So What?’”
Opening up about her negative experiences with the music press during the early stages of her career, Sarah recalls, “I always got a bit of a bashing from female journalists. On a personal level, they were always singling me out and having a bit of a pop, which I thought was really wrong.” She continues, “It was a very male-dominated industry then, not so much now at all. I thought that surely all the women involved in the music world should be uniting, championing and supporting each other, but they didn’t always. They could be quite mean. I think a bit of solidarity would have been good.”
International is the band’s eighth release under Heavenly. Speaking on their long-time relationship with the label, Pete states, “We were slightly caught between two stalls. We had two families, the Heavenly family, and the Creation Records family.” The band was managed by Creation’s Alan McGee (Oasis, The Libertines, Primal Scream) in the early '90s. “They’re on the ball still, which is pretty amazing for a label that’s been going for so long. They’re always signing artists who are either really interesting or causing a bit of controversy. They let us do what we want, and be quite independent. We don’t get told that we can’t do an ambient album or anything like that, but they’re also really good as a sounding board. If you’re looking for interesting remixes and stuff like that, they always know the right people to get in touch with.”
Sarah adds to this, “They’re our spiritual home. Jeff has always been such a champion of ours. We’re very like-minded, and they attract the same kind of people. It’s like a big gang of people that get on, and who have similar musical ideas. It’s a real hotbed of ideas, and everyone’s quite a good laugh.” She continues, “They take bands on and just let them breathe, and let them be themselves.”
One track on the new album, Brand New Me, features their label mates Confidence Man, the electro-pop duo from Queensland, Australia, who are currently enduring a meteoric rise. Shedding light on the track’s inception, Sarah says, “They managed to get in touch with me originally via Danny [Mitchell] at Heavenly, and they’d been fans of ours, which was really flattering. We met them at Kite Festival in Oxfordshire in 2022, because we were both playing.” That year, the label curated a large part of the festival’s lineup, which also saw the likes of Baxter Dury, Katy J Pearson, and Gwenno step up to its stage. “We got chatting, and they sent over the idea for Brand New Me, and we worked on it a bit. It wasn’t necessarily for us; it was for them originally. They wanted to put it out. Then they had a stratospheric rise in fame, popularity, and business, and suddenly it just fell by the wayside a little bit. Then when we were doing our record, I thought it would fit brilliantly, so I kind of stole it off them and brought it back to us.”
Another song on the record, Glad, sees the trio team up with their old friend Tom Rowlands, who makes up one half of The Chemical Brothers. “Tom’s been such a constant in our lives. The Chems have done quite a few remixes for us over the years. We met them when they were The Dust Brothers, back when they were DJing at The Social and stuff. I’m good friends with Tom and his family, and I just love what he does. I was always trying to muscle my way in, perhaps as a guest vocalist or whatever,” Sarah explains. “I just asked him, I said ‘Have you got anything that might suit us, because we’re doing our last album and we’ve always wanted to work with you?’ and immediately he came back to us with a backing track that he’d already recorded. He’d been working with Jez Williams from Doves, and it was a demo they’d put together with Saint Etienne somewhere in the working title, and he said ‘Yeah, I’ve got this, and it always made Jez and me think of you guys.’ As soon as we heard it, we got a bit over-excited, didn’t we, Pete?”
He nods, adding, “It’s very exciting. It had these natural ups and downs which inspired the melody and the lyrics. Once we’d done that song, we thought we’d cracked the whole concept of this album. I think they started working on it about ten years ago!”
“Really? I’ve been duped - I thought it was only about two years old!” Sarah exclaims in response, adding, “It does sum up the album, that track. If you hear that, then you’ve got a good idea of what the album’s gonna be like, in sentiment and in style.”
As the trio prepare to step back from the cycle of recording and touring to spend more time with their families, friends, and one another, we conclude by asking what advice they have for new bands trying to succeed in today’s challenging music climate.
Sarah immediately jumps in. “I always say the same thing to new bands: they should always be true to themselves. Don’t get swayed and think ‘If I sound a bit more like that, I’ll be more popular or more successful.’ Just do what comes naturally, and what you really believe in. I think if you do that, then eventually people will come round to your way of thinking, rather than having it be the other way round.” She continues, “Just be yourself, and create your own scene.”
Pete agrees, “I’d say go to lots of gigs, and talk to people and other bands. Do gigs in pubs and things like that. Down here in Brighton where I live, there are loads of brilliant pub venues that aren’t massive, but their sound is great. Try and meet the people who you think your music shares some kinship with.”
Sarah adds to this, “My youngest son’s got a band, and he’s super dedicated. They’re called The Parallels; they’re really good. He did a residency recently at this pub in King’s Cross, which is a good thing to do, I think, because the crowd got bigger each time. He does things like making badges and t-shirts, and he gives them away at the gigs. I don’t know where he gets the money from, but they all have jobs as well. But people will go home with a badge and a t-shirt, and then they’ll go and wear them out. You do have to make your own merch, and invest in it a lot more than we would have had to when we were starting out.”
She concludes, “It’s a challenge, but I think there are a lot of great new bands around at the moment, and a lot of good solo artists, and female artists. There’s a lot going on. I think it’s a really good time for music, actually!”
