The Night by Saint Etienne
What happens when pop kids and club kids become much older? A stack of recent evidence from Sparks, Kylie Minogue, and Pet Shop Boys (whose 2016 song “Pop Kids” was a lively recollection of college days) indicates that bursts of intense creativity are possible, even likely.
Saint Etienne, whose first album came out in 1991, adds another disc to that stack with its 12th album, The Night. Delving further into the ambient sound of 2021’s I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, the UK indie trio also delves into emotions known more keenly in the dark hours.
Aptly starting with “Settle In,” a soundtrack to the intermingling of streetlights, headlights and brake lights, the movement into “Half Light” is almost invisible, with Sarah Cracknell hovering just above synthesizers that pulse swollenly, and sometimes spikily, in unhurried rhythm.
The Night often segues into and out of interludes in which streets and weather mix with music generated organically, it seems, by Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs, and Cracknell, the last of whom simply speaks of youth and age, action and relaxation.
Because Saint Etienne invests the interludes with full musicality, they stand on their own just as they enhance the flow of other songs, including the pensively stunning “Nightingale,” the childlike lilting of “Gold,” and the classically colored rueful balladry of “When You Were Young.”
Speaking or singing, Cracknell hasn’t lost anything important in her middle years: the clarity of phrasing remains, along with an earned maturity that, in a haunted, humming, and mournful song like “Preflyte,” is reminiscent of the hard lessons Dusty Springfield incorporated into her later voice.
“It feels like October, even though it may not be,” Cracknell intones on “Wonderlight,” before sliding into the hesitation of “Hear My Heart” and the groovy, trumpet-inflected contentment of “Alone Together.” When pop kids and club kids become much older, an album like The Night is a nocturne with which to embrace the passage of time.
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Stream or download The Night at Amazon here.
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