Saint Etienne have announced their 12th album, The Night, which will be out December 12 via Heavenly Recordings. This is the long-running British pop trio’s second experimental album in a row: 2021’s great I’ve Been Trying to Tell You took cues from liminal music on YouTube, created from samples of ’90s songs slowed to a crawl, but The Night imagines a pre-dawn world of tranquil ambience. Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs made the album with composer and producer Augustin Bousfield in the first half of 2024.
“It was great to all be in the same studio together again up at Gus’s in Bradford, we realized that it had been several years since we’d actually done that, sprawling out on the carpet, mugs of coffee in hand, sheets of lyrics and half ideas for titles lying around us,” says the band’s Pete Wiggs. “We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; Songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours
down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed. ‘Half Light’ is about the edge of night, the last rays of the sun flickering through the branches of trees, communing with nature and seeing things that might not be there.”
“We were trying to find the state that’s between being awake and asleep,” says Bob, “that dream space, with half forgotten thoughts drifting in, bits of TV dialogue, place names, streets, or football grounds you’ve never even been to. You feel very receptive to sound and half-covered memories when you’re in that state. Rain noise runs right through it. It was designed to gently wash away the stuff in your head that keeps you awake at 2am. I think The Night sounds really three-dimensional. A lot of that is down to Gus Bousfield who played the guitars and did a wonderful production job. Recording it in his studio, with so much light and space, has helped to shape it too. The three of us brought in our own songs, but lyrically we were all in tune with each other without having to swap notes first.” He adds, “You could think of it as one continuous, single track. It’s definitely a headphone album.”
The Night
1. Settle In
2. Half Light
3. Through The Glass
4. Nightingale
5. Northern Counties East
6. Ellar Carr
7. When You Were Young
8. No Rush
9. Gold
10. Celestial
11. Preflyte
12. Wonderlight
13. Hear My Heart
14. Alone Together