How We Used Saint Etienne to Live

by Ramzy Alwakeel

Do you remember how we used to live? British indie favourites 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 It’s about the methods we use to remember, and what happens when those methods become outdated.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.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

300 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2022

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

Possibly the least Hammer Of The Gods band imaginable, St Etienne were never going to suit a conventional band biography, so Ramzy Alwakeel (whose book on the similarly non-rocking Pet Shop Boys I've been meaning to check out for ages) very sensibly doesn't attempt one, instead opting for what Hayley Scott's blurb calls "a story of making memories and bringing dreams to life" (Owen Hatherley opts for the simpler, if equally true, "a wonderful book about a wonderful band"). The opening line is "They came from Croydon, and Windsor, and they came from London, and in a sense they came out of nowhere", and carries on in that vein, which serves to alert the reader straight off that there's a certain amount of Paul Morley in Alwakeel's prose style; the opposite of a problem as far as I'm concerned, but obviously your mileage (Morleyge?) may vary. There is information here, though, spliced with the theories: an account of the differences between various releases of some of the albums which mostly dances past the abyss of feeling like trainspottery irrelevance, not least through this being exactly the sort of stuff Pete and Bob bonded over; a discussion of the recording of the first track on the first St Etienne album, This Is Radio Etienne, "a record of two men who are respectively unsure and unaware that they are making a record". At its best, information and poetry weave together like a friendship bracelet from a perfect summer, like the exploration of how the band's early, expensive use of samples gave way to an increasing use of fake samples, treated so's to be just as evocative despite being all St Et's own work. Although I should note here that unlike the abbreviations I've used, Alwakeel does tend to call them the Saints, occasionally the Etienne, which is one of the areas where I can't altogether agree with him (see also quite how much he loves The Way I Fell For You). Still, I agree with him on plenty of other stuff; Finisterre is certainly a, if not the, masterpiece. And unlike the more trying end of music writing, he has no interest here in establishing a canon, instead pointing out quite how inapplicable such a concept must be for a band whose frequently maddening approach to releasing their music via various inconvenient channels and in multiple non-definitive editions might be a deliberate mirror of the way they remember discovering music themselves, back in the pre-digital day.

Given the referentiality of St Etienne's music, talking about them inevitably means talking about all manner of other things, and while Alwakeel's selection might not be the same as yours or mine, it's certainly one which makes sense, ranging from the sins of New Labour to the wit of a good compilation album – most of the original interviews here are, unsurprisingly, with the three core members of the band, but there's also a brief word with the man responsible for the tracklisting of the Now That's What I Call Music album which provided the author with his first (well, sort of, but he goes into that) introduction to his subject. That chance meeting, mythologised as any moment so formative must be, refracting through the theme of memory, bouncing off the band's own complicated relationship with concepts like retro and nostalgia, leading into things like the way they often seem absent from their own songs, and how that isn't necessarily the drawback people who miss the point might think, instead contributing to the melancholy perfection of their greatest work: "Their records embody a sadness without object, sometimes because of the untoucably perfect soundscapes that make us feel like we are watching the silver screen rather than anyone's reality".

Though there is one detail here I could happily have lived without knowing: when St Et sampled the Lighthouse Family for I've Been Trying To Tell You in 2021, they were using a source from the same distance in time as when they sampled Dusty Springfield for Nothing Can Stop Us.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Peter Baran · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something that feels kind if old -fashioned about How We Used Saint Etienne To Live, a gangly loosey-goosey extended essay about what the pop band Saint Etienne are, what they mean, and how they fit into the writer's life. It is not extensively autobiographical about the author (I've read 33 1/3rds which are more memoir), but equally more time is given to Now That's What I Call Music 33 than a couple of the band's albums. It has the sense of a cosy chat with a smart, engaged fan who has probably spent too much time thinking about his own relationship with a band. But that cosiness and low-level obsession mean it is an engaging and quick read (I did it in one 80-minute sitting).

Brief mea culpa, I know Bob out of St Etienne pretty well, and I am actually mentioned in a song on their album Words And Pictures (which is an album which does get a deep dive, though not my bit). So I know about St Etienne, and have opinions about them and - quite crucially - I don't necessarily agree with everything Ramzy Alwakeel has written here. But that's OK, its that kind of book. It doesn't want to be right, it is much more interested in the conversation. Whilst it is a book partially about fandom, its a book about how St Etienne relate to fandom as pop music fans themselves. How reflexive and meta that relationship might be without making the self-reflexiveness to point. Alwakeel spends quite a lot of time talking about fake samples, which is almost presented as if St Etienne invented them, but literally, at the same time, Portishead were probably making even more strides into that area.

So How We Used St Etienne To Live is neither exhaustive, nor definitive, very personal and playful without necessarily demanding engagement. What is it? Its a big essay book, an hour or so down the pub of someone enthusing (generously) about their favourite band. I learnt a lot, and I bristked a bit. And it was quite a lot of fun playing some of the old records again.

[Alex Cornetto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caveat - I went to university with the author, and we were buddies in a former life.

Review - from knowing him then, this is the book he was born to write. It might not be the kind of approach all fans expect, but it’s the sort of interrogation that Saint Etienne deserves.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Repeater Books for an advanced copy of this biography and social history of this one of a kind band.

Only love can break your heart, but only one band could make me sou feel heavy and deep, while making my feet want to move, which me being me, was not going to happen. Cryptic lyrics, danceable beats, hooks to die for, an odd name that was both foreign and a bit sacrilegious, British. I was in on this band. I first was introduced to the band when working in an independent record shop. Brad, I think was his name, was our conduit, pre-internet to all tunes from overseas. Brad read Q, The Face, New Music Express and knew everything about everyone before it was shown on MTV's 120 Minutes, which was about the only place outside of CMJ that people found out about music. Brad was always cool about playing what he ordered in the store and let us play FoxBase Alpha the first band from Saint Etienne and I was blown away. Odd samples, covers, secret messages, different languages. They were like the Golden Palominos only English, and not so scary. Thought being a fan too a little work. Which is something that Ramzy Alwakeel, writes and discusses in How We Used Saint Etienne to Live a biography of the band, a memoir of the author growing up with the band, and the usual life, the universe and loving music.

The book begins with possibly locations for the foundations of the band and goes on in that style for almost the rest of the book, especially when he is discusses the band. The past is not that important to them, why should it be for the reader. There are asides, notes on the authors life, how he discovered the band, a history of singles, and how they were presented to the public. A brief history of the compilation series Now That's What I Call Music! which is where Saint Etienne's first single was released. This is also a social history and one that covers almost 30 years in music, from the beginning to 2021 release. There are interviews with the band, and others and those are quite good, informative, and funny in different ways, maybe not clearing up questions and maybe leading to a lot more questioning thoughts.

There is a lot of very good writing here. Readers get the feeling that the author is drawn to music and really enjoys not just listening, but discovering and finding reason in what the author listens to. The book does jump alot, from current single, to first single, to the authors childhood, to someplace else. This is not a A, B, C book with strict chronological writing. Nor is it just a puff piece. As one reads, play the albums, listen as one goes on, and things will get clearer. There is a lot of information, and a lot of good and fun ideas in here. It might seem a tad ethereal to some readers, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, and realized I have missed some singles and other recordings over the years, so my wish list just got longer.

For fans of the band, this is a no-brainer and one that will be enjoyed. People who have interests in late 90's music especially British music will also enjoy this, and find a lot of things to think and listen to and for. However this is also a good book for creative types. One might not think your art is good, nor will be appreciated it. The best thing one can do is try to surround oneself with creative people, and as a socially awkward introvert I know that is hard, but try, and make what you like, and what you feel you want to here. Something beautiful and amazing could come of it. And there might be some good books like this one being written about it.

[Scott JB]

I really enjoyed 'Smile If You Dare', Alwakeel's book about the Pet Shop Boys' album 'Very' and the socio-political context of its genesis, lyrics, and creators. This second book, about Saint Etienne, is likewise a good, informative, thought-provoking read, though it lacks the taut structure of 'Smile If You Dare', which was a track-by-track breakdown of the album at hand, one chapter/essay per song, with an overarching thesis. Here, Alwakeel is more nebulously interested in Saint Etienne's identity as a band: what they stand for, or embody, both personally to him and as icons/archivists of a certain kind of English social culture over the past half-century. This is a somewhat circuitous subject matter, overlaid on itself, which involves Alwakeel figuring and refiguring the various meanings that can be drawn from the band's investment in memory as both a subject and a sonic world (sampling, recreation, pastiche, etc), and the meanings of the things that led to the band becoming invested in memory. There's also some informative, granular detail about the methods through which the band reinscribe that on the present, their pre-band pasts, and the band's own past as their career develops.

It all culminates beautifully into a very direct, impassioned few pages about a particular kind of fandom - what we might call music nerdery - and how the textures of the life of a music fan in the pre-digital age (top 40 countdowns, mixtapes, Top of the Pops, Our Price, etc) are now an aesthetic of their own, a fetishisable historic lifestyle of encountering, engaging with and consuming music, and communicating that as an identity. And this is nicely mirrored in the way that Alwakeel writes about how aesthetic worlds are misremembered, tailored, and remade, just as Saint Etienne created a sound that was part an imagined, misremembered 60s/70s that never really happened; how they picked and chose and captured a "remembered" spirit, but also repurposed it for their own age, making it a comment on and reckoning with both moments in time. (Or, as Shakespeare put it: What's past is prologue.)

As such, Alwakeel's central theme for this book is sometimes hard to grasp, and he doubles back on himself multiple times. The different chapters don't always feel distinct from one another, in subject matter or argument, and this time around I don't think Alwakeel offers up as much surprising knowledge as he did with the Pet Shop Boys. There's a fantastic section about Saint Etienne's film-album Finisterre and its connections to political issues in London and the UK at the end of the 20th Century, especially about the loss of social housing and the impact this has had on people's personal, professional and emotional lives. I wished he'd given us more of this. (Maybe there's another book about Finisterre to be written, and how that album embodied a change in Saint Etienne's outlook on London, England and Englishness: the New Labour dream waking up into its ugly, neoliberal reality.)

Still, as a book about the unreliability of memory, how record collecting functions as a form of memorialising, and how pop music - not just Saint Etienne but plenty of other artists - participates in and contributes to that process, it's worth checking out. Alwakeel is a funny, engaging and thoughtful writer, who wears his erudition and intellectual research lightly. Few cultural theorists can discuss "deterritorialisation" in a way that doesn't make you hate them, but he's one of them.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

How We Used Saint Etienne to Live by Ramzy Alwakeel is the type of profile that, while different from most musical profiles, offers more toward an understanding than simply a chronological overview. In other words, this will help a reader to place both the band and the reader's own past into perspective.

While I was familiar with them during the 90s from spending a short time in the UK and from friends from there, they were not a big part of my world since they didn't get a lot of US coverage. There were, however, a number of clubs where we could hear their music, plus I tended to buy some imports. So this review is from the perspective of someone who knew of them but didn't have them as part of my typical sonic environment.

I was particularly interested in how they approached what they were making, what they considered themselves as doing. Certainly there is plenty of hindsight revision, that is to be expected with any interviews that touch on several decades worth of activity. That said, I never got the impression they were trying to overly sugarcoat anything, they were telling their history as they now remember it. Since memory is such a theme is the book, that just makes it all the more interesting.

For those who did indeed have their music as part of their regular soundtrack at the time there will be the usual places to agree or disagree about assessments by the author or what events of the time were most important. For someone less familiar with their history in any detail, this makes for a very good introduction or, in my case, reminder of what I did know and then make that skimpy bit of information both larger and more meaningful.

I would recommend this to anyone interested either in them specifically of cultural history of the 90s and after. Age plays some part, but the author was a child when they formed, most of their fans were probably (just guessing here) from late teens through their twenties, then there are people like me who was in my thirties for most of the decade and turned forty near the end. So there will be, for many, a bit of a nostalgia feel, whether of the music or the history.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Jennyfer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to the music of Saint Etienne by my brother (who was always far cooler than I) when Too Young to Die was released in '95, and I fell in love with their sound. Saint Et is the soundtrack to my uni days.I was the one in my circle of friends with the indie, Britpop dance music alongside the metal and Oz-rock and mainstream pop my friends liked. Good times, good memories, good music.

Memory and nostalgia - both real and manufactured - are themes that often run through Saint Etienne's music, and so they weave through How We Used Saint Etienne to Live by Ramzy Alwakeel.

How We Used Saint Etienne to Live is an essay reminiscing on the music and the times that influenced the creation of that music. It's both a personal journey as the author discusses what Saint Etienne and their music mean to him, and a biography of the band itself. But it's not told in a chronological order - rather it starts with
how the author discovers them before weaving through the themes that link Foxbase Alpha and Finisterre, So Tough to Tales from Turnpike House and finishing with Words and Music (which is far from their final album!) How We Used Saint Etienne to Live looks at the impact modern music consumption has on (relatively niche) bands who relied on physical sales and how the music became at once more accessible to a wider audience while losing the tribe feeling of belonging to a fandom.

Ultimately, this is a book about how music shapes lives; specifically how music shaped the lives of the band and how the band in turn shaped the live of the author.

A good read for fans of Saint Etienne.

~Many thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review~

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How We Used Saint Etienne to Live" by David Keenan is a memoir, a musical group history and a tribute to fandom.

The author discovered the band Saint Etienne on the latter tracks of a 2 CD compilation, and the rest was history. The band began by leaning into nostalgia with samples from the past. When that became expensive, they created their own samples, inventing their own nostalgia. The band has evolved their themes, beginning with an idealized version of living in London to the political and economic realities of that once they moved there. The author focuses on key albums, including interviews with the band. There is also a fun chapter on the author’s history of collecting all, or most, of the band’s music.

Saint Etienne are an obscure band in the States, but I still enjoyed this journey back to the 1990s and the feeling of loving a band that maybe a lot of people haven’t heard of. I quite liked this book.

[Dante]

hard to assess, for I have never been to London.