Culture Vulture’s Rich Jevons takes a trip to Holmfirth to talk to Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell who this month releases her new solo album ‘Red Kite’ and plays at City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds.
Rich Jevons: In the last Saint Etienne album Words & Music it describes you as a teen listening to music in your bedroom.
Sarah Cracknell: Yeah, I do still feel a nostalgia for that and I also think that people nowadays cherry-pick songs and tracks. They don’t necessarily know about the whole thing about the band, like what they look like and what they’re into. It’s a bit of a shame in a way. I was a proper music fan and obsessed with TOTP and Smash Hits.
Who’d be on your bedroom wall back then?
Debbie Harry.
A good role model..!
She was because she was seen as being an equal part of the band. And Siouxsie Sioux was another one and she still looks pretty amazing actually, I saw her not that long ago. With my parent’s music being around there was a lot of T Rex, The Beatles, The Carpenters and The Beach Boys so some stuff I still like now. Probably stuff that I rejected for a bit then I came back to.
You mentioned The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson in particular in terms of production.
Yeah, definitely, I like interesting production. I like it when you use instruments that aren’t used that often and you can effect an instrument in a way that it doesn’t sound like its original self, making a feature out of sounds you’re not used to hearing. I remember being completely obsessed by ‘Rock On’ with David Essex because that had a mad production, if you think about it. And again T Rex used some great productions.
And again, coming round a bit closer to home, you’ve worked with Marc Almond who in turn is working with Tony Visconti who produced T Rex.
Marc was lovely, he’s such a nice man, I love him to pieces. I spent about three times out socially with him but always really good fun after recording on his ‘Stardom Road’ album.
Was Words & Music more of a narrative or lyrical album?
It was a bit prog.. It was about music, how you listen to it and how it makes you feel. It had to have musical connotations in each song. It is quite good when you have a theme running through, it makes the writing process a bit easier.
How did Saint Etienne come to work on the film How We Used To Live?
It’s on Heavenly Films which is run by my husband Martin Kelly and my brother-in-law Paul Kelly is the director. They were in discussions with the BFI about making a film with archive footage about London. They went through hours and hours of tape and they decided to make it all colour and to stop when video came in. Apparently there was loads about the royal Family and the Tower of London and millions of buses but they tried to find some of the more interesting stuff. So then Pete Wiggs did the musical soundtrack which included a track by me from my first solo album.
Do you have fond memories of Flipside?
Yeah, I do mainly. The thing with the label and I is it just didn’t work out in the end aqnd quite catastrophically just before its release. It was more of a disjointed process of writing it and recording than my current one which was done in two week-long slots.
You’ve done a track with Nicky from the Manics, do you want to tell us more about that?
Yeah, it’s called ‘There’s Nothing Left To Talk About’ and I wanted to make it with him because I thought he had the right voice for it. There’s a kind of charm in his voice and it’s kind of a break-up song although there is a little bit of hope towards the end. I didn’t want it to sound like two angry people being angry with each other, so I wanted a twinkle in the voice, a slight amount of fragility.
And you’ve released ‘On the Swings’ as a taster.
It’s a good idea as a taster because I didn’t want people to have preconceptions of what a Sarah Cracknell album should sound like. I didn’t want people to think it would be just like ‘Lipslide’ or electronia or superpop. I wanted them to realise it was a bit more pastoral.
Could you tell us a bit about the production on the new album with Carwyn Ellis and Seb Lewsley?
We were all used to working with analogue and getting good analogue sounds and on a whim I wanted to record it in this barn near to where I live. This meant they could live with me in my house while we recorded.
You mentioned Marianne Faithful as an influence.
It was that kind of 60s baroque pop music that was one of the elements that we wanted to get in there.
Are a lot of the songs on ‘Red Kite’ about relationships?
Oh yeah, [emphatically] but it’s all kind of imaginary people, it’s quite cinematic.
Sarah Cracknell’s ‘Red Kite’ is out on Cherry Red
‘How We Used to Live’ is on Heavenly Films
Sarah Cracknell performs at Leeds City Varieties on 16 June