Album Review: Saint Etienne - Home Counties

Miraculously, after 27 years as Saint Etienne, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell have found a way to sound more English than ever by conceptually celebrating, deriding and re-daydreaming the home counties that surround London with typically kitsch and swinging panache.

Bob Stanley’s scholarly command of pop-styles provides a luxuriance of lyrical paronomasia and moreish candy choruses, gleefully bouncing around poptastic genres across the decades. Sean Connery’s 007 could knock back a Martini to the ‘60s Motown stomp of Underneath The Apple Tree while Daniel Craig’s Bond would dig the more modernist Magpie Eyes. That’s not to say Home Counties gets tethered to ‘spy noir’ á la Portishead; kaleidoscopic colour comes via Dive’s glitzy disco dressed in denim and button badges.

Sweet Arcadia’s epic-scale glumness could be their Ghost Town were Cracknell not enunciating every word like verbal Viagra. On Something New and the harpsichord kissed Take It All In, she could pass for Green ‘Scritti Politti’ Gartside’s doppelgänger and Whyteleafe imagines what if David Jones’ star had remained claustrophobic-ised by drab municipality instead of ascending to become the Starman Bowie. What Saint Etienne’s ninth has pulled off is a document that wears their Britishness proudly and with good humour. An unexpected groovy treat.