For AMP

Julie Burchill's sleevenotes from St Etienne's Too Young To Die:

The spirit of St Etienne resides in serveral select sites and states of mind. The smell and sheen of a dismayed seaside town the day after summer; anticipation; the straight, shiny, swinging hair of the perfect sixties girl as she jumps ceaselessly in slo-mo into the perfect MG; sorrow, oftn so sumptuous that it feels like pleasure; the lonely splendour of the first model home in Milton Keynes; the sheer, heart-stopping unimpeachable joy of waking up in the monring and stillbeing English.
Add to all the fact that they are the music heard on the edge of sound, and it was always a forgone conclusion that you would surrender to this most mellifous of menage a tois. Because if God is truly in the details then St Etienne sit at his right hand holding his slide rule.

Pop music, in all its squalid slendour, has always had a horrible habit of making one less than one is, boiling you down to the lowest common denominator of the big black throbbing bottom bass line; what's his name, what's his number and how do I get him? But St Etienne always made you more. You'd put on the Saints and sit around for hours musing on what it meant to be a girl, to be of the English blood royal, to be alive, to be duplicit, to be living after the fall of Communism, to be living at the end of the century, to be human. And then, and only then, would you genefluct with L'Heure Bleu and leave the house by the fire escape when all were sleeping to meet him by the waltzer and snog him on the beach.

Long before the current and thoroughly admirable habit of Brit beat bands writing soundtracks for films no one would ever make, St Etienne were writing the new, improved soundtrack for the one and future cinema Renaissance. They sound silver; silverer than any screen could ever be. And they cast a giant shadow, a Pale Movie itself. Like A Motorway expands into Two Into Three Won't Go; Hug My Soul sees in Here We Go Round The Mullberry Bush; You're In A Bad Way blows the whistle on Billy Liar; Hobart Paving collects the debris outside The L-Shaped Room. Just close your eyes and you can see Pearl and Dean's eternal blue sky.

Like coming from a cinema matinee into daylight, St Etienne strand you blinking and disorientated, but happy. And already you miss them, before they can even leave. And yet you want them to leave, so you can get on with the serious business of missing them. To late to say goodbye, but too young to die; remember them this way.