I was introduced to the music of Saint Etienne by my brother (who was always far cooler than I) when Too Young to Die was released in '95, and I fell in love with their sound. Saint Et is the soundtrack to my uni days.I was the one in my circle of friends with the indie, Britpop dance music alongside the metal and Oz-rock and mainstream pop my friends liked. Good times, good memories, good music.

Memory and nostalgia - both real and manufactured - are themes that often run through Saint Etienne's music, and so they weave through How We Used Saint Etienne to Live by Ramzy Alwakeel.

How We Used Saint Etienne to Live is an essay reminiscing on the music and the times that influenced the creation of that music. It's both a personal journey as the author discusses what Saint Etienne and their music mean to him, and a biography of the band itself. But it's not told in a chronological order - rather it starts with
how the author discovers them before weaving through the themes that link Foxbase Alpha and Finisterre, So Tough to Tales from Turnpike House and finishing with Words and Music (which is far from their final album!) How We Used Saint Etienne to Live looks at the impact modern music consumption has on (relatively niche) bands who relied on physical sales and how the music became at once more accessible to a wider audience while losing the tribe feeling of belonging to a fandom.

Ultimately, this is a book about how music shapes lives; specifically how music shaped the lives of the band and how the band in turn shaped the live of the author.

A good read for fans of Saint Etienne.

~Many thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review~

There's something that feels kind if old -fashioned about How We Used Saint Etienne To Live, a gangly loosey-goosey extended essay about what the pop band Saint Etienne are, what they mean, and how they fit into the writer's life. It is not extensively autobiographical about the author (I've read 33 1/3rds which are more memoir), but equally more time is given to Now That's What I Call Music 33 than a couple of the band's albums. It has the sense of a cosy chat with a smart, engaged fan who has probably spent too much time thinking about his own relationship with a band. But that cosiness and low-level obsession mean it is an engaging and quick read (I did it in one 80-minute sitting).

Brief mea culpa, I know Bob out of St Etienne pretty well, and I am actually mentioned in a song on their album Words And Pictures (which is an album which does get a deep dive, though not my bit). So I know about St Etienne, and have opinions about them and - quite crucially - I don't necessarily agree with everything Ramzy Alwakeel has written here. But that's OK, its that kind of book. It doesn't want to be right, it is much more interested in the conversation. Whilst it is a book partially about fandom, its a book about how St Etienne relate to fandom as pop music fans themselves. How reflexive and meta that relationship might be without making the self-reflexiveness to point. Alwakeel spends quite a lot of time talking about fake samples, which is almost presented as if St Etienne invented them, but literally, at the same time, Portishead were probably making even more strides into that area.

So How We Used St Etienne To Live is neither exhaustive, nor definitive, very personal and playful without necessarily demanding engagement. What is it? Its a big essay book, an hour or so down the pub of someone enthusing (generously) about their favourite band. I learnt a lot, and I bristked a bit. And it was quite a lot of fun playing some of the old records again.

There's a lot to enjoy in this short and personal account of Saint Etienne's music and influence. Alwakeel is very good on the band's influence and influences, as well as their ability to remain hazy and distanced, well out of the spotlight. It's really an extended essay and in fact I'd have liked a bit more theory, more analysis and more from the interviews that the author carried out with Bob, Pete and Sarah (and a bit less of where and when he bought which LP or CD, although I realise that this kind of crate-digging is entirely appropriate in the context of this particular story). Saint Etienne remain rather under-rated and under-appreciated, but their clever and often beautiful music, which is rooted in a deep love of pop music, deserve to be much more widely praised and considered. Hopefully this book will go some way towards achieving this.

Ramzy Alwakeel’s remarkable book is both a love-letter to the music and culture of late ‘90s Britain and a mind-expanding celebration of one of the most singular and accomplished bands from that time, St. Etienne.
Well-written and accessible to the intelligent reader, but also quite esoteric and obtuse at times, and not written chronologically, the book is autobiographical and historical. The music, styles and politics of the time are all explored through the prism of the band’s music.
“How We Used St. Etienne To Live” is clever and intelligent and deserves a place on discerning fans’ bookshelves.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Repeater Books for an advanced copy of this biography and social history of this one of a kind band.

Only love can break your heart, but only one band could make me sou feel heavy and deep, while making my feet want to move, which me being me, was not going to happen. Cryptic lyrics, danceable beats, hooks to die for, an odd name that was both foreign and a bit sacrilegious, British. I was in on this band. I first was introduced to the band when working in an independent record shop. Brad, I think was his name, was our conduit, pre-internet to all tunes from overseas. Brad read Q, The Face, New Music Express and knew everything about everyone before it was shown on MTV's 120 Minutes, which was about the only place outside of CMJ that people found out about music. Brad was always cool about playing what he ordered in the store and let us play FoxBase Alpha the first band from Saint Etienne and I was blown away. Odd samples, covers, secret messages, different languages. They were like the Golden Palominos only English, and not so scary. Thought being a fan too a little work. Which is something that Ramzy Alwakeel, writes and discusses in How We Used Saint Etienne to Live a biography of the band, a memoir of the author growing up with the band, and the usual life, the universe and loving music.

The book begins with possibly locations for the foundations of the band and goes on in that style for almost the rest of the book, especially when he is discusses the band. The past is not that important to them, why should it be for the reader. There are asides, notes on the authors life, how he discovered the band, a history of singles, and how they were presented to the public. A brief history of the compilation series Now That's What I Call Music! which is where Saint Etienne's first single was released. This is also a social history and one that covers almost 30 years in music, from the beginning to 2021 release. There are interviews with the band, and others and those are quite good, informative, and funny in different ways, maybe not clearing up questions and maybe leading to a lot more questioning thoughts.

There is a lot of very good writing here. Readers get the feeling that the author is drawn to music and really enjoys not just listening, but discovering and finding reason in what the author listens to. The book does jump alot, from current single, to first single, to the authors childhood, to someplace else. This is not a A, B, C book with strict chronological writing. Nor is it just a puff piece. As one reads, play the albums, listen as one goes on, and things will get clearer. There is a lot of information, and a lot of good and fun ideas in here. It might seem a tad ethereal to some readers, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, and realized I have missed some singles and other recordings over the years, so my wish list just got longer.

For fans of the band, this is a no-brainer and one that will be enjoyed. People who have interests in late 90's music especially British music will also enjoy this, and find a lot of things to think and listen to and for. However this is also a good book for creative types. One might not think your art is good, nor will be appreciated it. The best thing one can do is try to surround oneself with creative people, and as a socially awkward introvert I know that is hard, but try, and make what you like, and what you feel you want to here. Something beautiful and amazing could come of it. And there might be some good books like this one being written about it.

Possibly the least Hammer Of The Gods band imaginable, St Etienne were never going to suit a conventional band biography, so Ramzy Alwakeel (whose book on the similarly non-rocking Pet Shop Boys I've been meaning to check out for ages) very sensibly doesn't attempt one, instead opting for what Hayley Scott's blurb calls "a story of making memories and bringing dreams to life" (Owen Hatherley opts for the simpler, if equally true, "a wonderful book about a wonderful band"). The opening line is "They came from Croydon, and Windsor, and they came from London, and in a sense they came out of nowhere", and carries on in that vein, which serves to alert the reader straight off that there's a certain amount of Paul Morley in Alwakeel's prose style; the opposite of a problem as far as I'm concerned, but obviously your mileage (Morleyge?) may vary. There is information here, though, spliced with the theories: an account of the differences between various releases of some of the albums which mostly dances past the abyss of feeling like trainspottery irrelevance, not least through this being exactly the sort of stuff Pete and Bob bonded over; a discussion of the recording of the first track on the first St Etienne album, This Is Radio Etienne, "a record of two men who are respectively unsure and unaware that they are making a record". At its best, information and poetry weave together like a friendship bracelet from a perfect summer, like the exploration of how the band's early, expensive use of samples gave way to an increasing use of fake samples, treated so's to be just as evocative despite being all St Et's own work. Although I should note here that unlike the abbreviations I've used, Alwakeel does tend to call them the Saints, occasionally the Etienne, which is one of the areas where I can't altogether agree with him (see also quite how much he loves The Way I Fell For You). Still, I agree with him on plenty of other stuff; Finisterre is certainly a, if not the, masterpiece. And unlike the more trying end of music writing, he has no interest here in establishing a canon, instead pointing out quite how inapplicable such a concept must be for a band whose frequently maddening approach to releasing their music via various inconvenient channels and in multiple non-definitive editions might be a deliberate mirror of the way they remember discovering music themselves, back in the pre-digital day.

Given the referentiality of St Etienne's music, talking about them inevitably means talking about all manner of other things, and while Alwakeel's selection might not be the same as yours or mine, it's certainly one which makes sense, ranging from the sins of New Labour to the wit of a good compilation album – most of the original interviews here are, unsurprisingly, with the three core members of the band, but there's also a brief word with the man responsible for the tracklisting of the Now That's What I Call Music album which provided the author with his first (well, sort of, but he goes into that) introduction to his subject. That chance meeting, mythologised as any moment so formative must be, refracting through the theme of memory, bouncing off the band's own complicated relationship with concepts like retro and nostalgia, leading into things like the way they often seem absent from their own songs, and how that isn't necessarily the drawback people who miss the point might think, instead contributing to the melancholy perfection of their greatest work: "Their records embody a sadness without object, sometimes because of the untoucably perfect soundscapes that make us feel like we are watching the silver screen rather than anyone's reality".

Though there is one detail here I could happily have lived without knowing: when St Et sampled the Lighthouse Family for I've Been Trying To Tell You in 2021, they were using a source from the same distance in time as when they sampled Dusty Springfield for Nothing Can Stop Us.

(Netgalley ARC)