Family Entertainments present Saint Etienne

For every Eton, there’s a Slough. For every Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, a Gemma Collins. The home counties of Saint Etienne’s ninth album are those that don’t get hymned by the stockbroker belt Conservatives. They are the places of forgotten bands like Soul Family Sensation and the Onlookers, of new towns and railway stations, of motorways and industrial estates. It’s the heart of Britain, unpopular as that view might be.

What’s remarkable about Home Counties (and its predecessor, Words and Music) is that Saint Etienne, in what might have been expected to be their dotage, are making the best music of their quarter-century career. Freed from the pressures of worrying their single might stall at No 41, they record now only when they have something to say – like AC/DC, Saint Etienne make an album every five or six years, and if you want to hear it, you have to wait.

All three of Saint Etienne are home counties natives. Stanley and Pete Wiggs hail from Reigate in Surrey, singer Sarah Cracknell from Old Windsor. “Growing up in Reigate, we were on a slightly different wavelength to most people, and people that we felt connected with over the years say they felt the same,” Wiggs says.

“Pretty much everyone we grew up with was drawn to London,” Cracknell adds. “It was like a magnet. Because we were close enough it wasn’t difficult to go up every weekend, which is what I did, or to move to London.”

“London is basically socialist, but you have this ring around it that is definitely not socialist, which is also probably the bit that runs the country,” explains Bob Stanley. “The country isn’t run by Londoners at all; it’s run by people in the home counties. That’s a negative. But there’s also a huge amount of modernist architecture in the home counties, more than there is anywhere else in the country. And new towns. There are a lot of things that are quite adventurous, but the rest of the country hates the home counties, understandably – it hates them more than it hates London. If it knows what they are. You’d probably still get called a cockney if you were from Berkshire or Essex.”

Saint Etienne’s home counties was one in which a less regulated society meant it was possible to do things you could never get away with now. “My friends used to go the pub from school and get changed out of their school uniforms in the toilets into their civvies and then go and get a drink,” Cracknell says. “Imagine doing that today! It did lead to a group of quite creative people. People who ended up in bands, who performed in the pubs, people who got into fashion and DJing and the dance music scene when it started. So it did create this bubble of interesting people.”

Both Wiggs and Cracknell have moved out of London, following parenthood, and have decided to, in Wiggs’s words, “reclaim the home counties”.

And the songs they have written are glorious things. If the last album, Words and Music by Saint Etienne, had been the group effortlessly proving that state-of-the-art pop was something they could provide without breaking sweat, Home Counties is a relaxed record, skipping through the styles, with sonic inserts – it opens with an introduction marking this as a Radio 4 kind of record (in March, Wiggs and Stanley also appeared on Radio 3, as part of Hull’s City of Culture celebrations, meaning they have now had a wholly natural place on all four of the main BBC radio networks – them and the Beatles, then).

Underneath, though, is a very understated kind of subversion. Train Drivers in Eyeliner becomes the first Saint Etienne song to make reference to Whitesnake’s Fool For Your Loving, as it details the musical tastes of senior members of the rail union. How do you find out the musical tastes of senior members of Aslef? “By hanging around with people who know them,” Stanley says, gnomically.

Whyteleafe is one of the album’s centrepieces, named for a suburb of Croydon, the town that was Stanley and Wiggs’s metropolis as teenagers, in the days when they would get a bus to a pub just inside the London postcode zones, just so they could say they’d been for a drink in London. It’s based on the story of someone who ended up staying in suburbia, working in the kind of job millions of people end up doing, who had a flash of realisation in June 2016 that maybe he made the wrong choices with his life when he discovered he was the only person in his office to have voted remain in the EU referendum. Yet, Stanley insists, it’s lighthearted – as is Heather, written by Wiggs, which became “loosely” about the Enfield Poltergeist halfway through writing. “No one was called Heather in the original incident,” Stanley observes. “But it’s a realistic name for a suburban ghost.”

Having growing children has revitalised Saint Etienne’s relationship not just with geography, but with pop music. “I’m revisiting it through my children,” Cracknell says. “At the moment I really like a station in Oxfordshire called Jack 2, which is all electronic music and grime, and I really love it. I sit there in the car with the kids and listen to it, and I’m really reengaging with chart pop. So much chart pop is reengaged with the early 90s. I went off pop for a bit, but I love it again.”

They’ve noticed something different, though – that their kids don’t need to feel ownership of the music, physically or spiritually, the way they all did as teenagers. “Music is just a thing you have on,” Wiggs says. “My son doesn’t need to know all the details behind it.”

“They aren’t bothered by what the artists stand for, what they believe in,” Cracknell adds. “That kind of thing has gone slightly, which is a shame.”

Saint Etienne still believe in pop, though, and Home Counties is delicious restatement of core values – if anything, it’s a more accomplished return to the sound and working methods of the Saint Etienne so many people fell in love with in he early 1990s, aided by producer Shawn Lee (Young Gun Silver Fox). “It’s a return to the way we used to write stuff,” Wiggs says, “singing stuff back to him and asking if he could recreate it. Which he could.”

For some years now, when Saint Etienne go into the studio, one or other member will fear it is for the last time, that they won’t be back. The record gets finished, and the three members – still, after all this time, quite evidently friends in a way that groups who ruthlessly pursue success are not – drift apart, come together again for the occasional show and tour, drift apart again. And then five years have passed … “and we get itchy feet”, as Cracknell puts it.

Thank heaven for those itchy feet. And welcome back to suburbia, Saint Etienne.

• Chargrilled handmade burger with crispy bacon melted mozzarella, iceberg relish and side of chips & onion rings
• Grilled chicken and vegetable kebabs served with sundried tomato and basil couscous
• Local fish fritto misto served with chips, lemon and parsley mayo finish with oriental style salad
• Young spinach, artichokes, green asparagus and cherry tomato pasta with a lime, olive oil & parmesan dressing (V) (GF)
• Vegan salad organic bean shoots, cherry tomatoes, avocado & vegan smoked cheese with a lime, ginger & vanilla dressing (V) (GF)

• Sweet potato wedges with Jalapeno pesto dip and a cucumber & mint raita (V)
• Chunky chips and homemade mayo (V)
• Green salad (V)

Please note that Booking Fees apply on the following transactions:

Online: Tickets booked online are subject to booking fees when purchased through our website. E-tickets are emailed instantly on the account you have registered with DLWP, please check your Junk folder if they don’t arrive within 30 minutes. Customers can also download their tickets through our website within ‘My Account’.

Telephone: £3.50 per transaction + £2 postage or free collection at the Box Office.

In Person: There are currently no charges for booking tickets in person.

There is a £2 charge to post tickets.

We strongly recommend ticket buyers to take out Ticket Protection insurance with Secure My Booking available when you book your tickets at check out.

Please note that we are only able to post tickets within the UK. If you live overseas please select box office collection or print at home tickets. Tickets purchased for post will be sent 10 – 14 days before the show date.

Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Book online: Pre-show dining can be booked online as an add-on when purchasing tickets for selected events. You will be purchasing a ticket to guarantee your meal before the show.
Please note you must be a ticket holder to the show to book pre-show dining.

Already booked your tickets? If you’ve already booked tickets for a show and would like to add dining, please contact Box Office: boxoffice@dlwp.com

On the night: If you have pre-booked please come to the bar to order from the gig menu and sit at one of the reserved tables.

Please be aware that we operate no re-entry for gigs. This means that once you have entered the building, you cannot go out and re-enter. This policy is in line with other major music venues across the UK and put in place on police advice. No re-entry is clearly signposted as you come through security on the front door.
There is a fenced-off area on the terrace for people who go out to smoke or vape.

There are plenty of welcoming and good value B&Bs & boutique hotels in Bexhill. The De La Warr Pavilion regularly uses the following:

• Seapray Rooms
• The Driftwood
• The Cooden Beach Hotel
• Coast B & B
• Buenos Aires
• Dunselma
• De La Warr View (Holiday Flat)

• By Rail
  Direct trains go from London Victoria, Brighton and Ashford to Bexhill.
  There are also trains from London Charing Cross, changing at St. Leonards Warrior Square and from London Bridge or Charing Cross going to Battle. Battle is only a short taxi journey away (15 mins approx).
  Visit www.nationalrail.co.uk for up-to-date train travel information.
• Taxis
  Town Taxis:  01424 211 511
  Parkhurst Taxis:  01424 733 456
• By Car
  If driving from the London area:
  Take the M25, then A21 to Hastings. Turn off at John‘s Cross and follow the signs to Bexhill.
  OR
  Take the A22 to Eastbourne, go across the Bishop roundabout to the A271 and follow the signs to Bexhill and the seafront. The De La Warr Pavilion is on the Marina.
  From the Brighton area:
  Follow the A27 out of Brighton until you arrive in Bexhill On Sea.
• Parking
  Please be aware the Rother District car park outside the De La Warr Pavilion operates paid parking until 7pm. After this time parking is free.

Within the limits of this Grade One listed building, the De La Warr Pavilion strives to be fully accessible with a range of facilities to support your visit.

Assistance Dogs are permitted into the building.

Please contact the Box Office on boxoffice@dlwp.com to arrange a visit.

Facilities for disabled visitors

• Ramped access at the front of the building
• A low counter at the Box Office and  Information Desk
• Disabled toilets on two floors
• A lift to all floors
• Accessible galleries on both floors
• An accessible Café
• Spaces for wheelchairs in the auditorium for seated events
• Ramped access in the auditorium for events during the day
• Ramped access into the Studio
• Two travel wheelchairs are available for use at the De La Warr Pavilion. To reserve, please call our box office and information desk on (01424) 229111 or ask a member of staff on arrival. The chairs are provided on a first come, first served basis and are intended for use inside the Pavilion. Please contact us for more information.

Facilities for blind or visually-impaired

• Large print season brochures

Facilities for the hard-of-hearing

• An T-Switch induction loop in some areas of the auditorium (please indicate when booking as this facility is not available on the balcony)
• British Sign Language interpretation tours of the building and exhibitions are available on request.