Out With A Bang

Dance-pop heroes wave farewell, with some top-drawer guest spots sprucing up the send-off.

- By Simon Price

Do You Believe In Magic? Those five words, borrowed from The Lovin' Spoonful and serving as the motto of Heavenly Recordings, are repeated, emphatically, throughout Saint Etienne's 1992 Italo House single Join Our Club. More than merely a question, they posed a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down.

The particular magic in which Saint Etienne believe is the magic of POP. On paper, of course, it shouldn't work. Precisely because Saint Etienne appear to have literally come into existence on paper. A group formed by two writers and a drama-schooled singer for hire ought, by rights, to be a dry and theoretical exercise. Instead, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell have released some of the most emotionally moving pop music ever created by humans.

Saint Etienne are kings and queen of the evocative. Not only do they understand what pop evokes, but they also know - and this part is so improbable that it borders on the impossible - how to make evocative pop themselves. The trick, in their case, is to never over-emote: Sarah Cracknell, crucially, always trusts melody over melisma, and allows the emotion to unfold in the heart of the listener.