I guess what throws people is the fact that they always try to do things differently - their collaborators will attest to this: from experimental electronic artists like To Roccoco Rot, via indie icons like Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, to 70s pop heartthrob David Essex... To me though, they always remained *coughs* "Pop".
I don't regard pop to be a dirty word at all (although many people do). After all, wasn't "pop" just an abbreviation of "popular"?
I'd been a fan of Saint Etienne for many years, but never had the chance to see them live - they'd only played Belfast once in twenty tears - and I'd missed that one! Anyway, back in May 2012, they played at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast in a stripped-down format - no additional guitarists or drummers - just sexy siren vocalist Sarah Cracknell and keyboard players, pop connoisseurs and studio boffins Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley, along with long-standing backing vocalist Debsey Wilkes.
The setlist showed how little the band had changed in the intervening years - the new songs could easily slot in alongside the classics and they could slip from the Balearic dance-pop of "Burnt Out Car" to the exquisite loveliness of "Like A Motorway" to the "Telstar" soundalike "You're In A Bad Way"without breaking a sweat and it's a testimony to the band that they quality of the work they've produced in the last 25 years has never dipped. Maybe theat's because they never really were part of the mainstream - singles which should've been top five hits barely scraped the top thirty - maybe they were/are simply too "knowing" for the average pop fan to trust them - or too "pop" for the hip indie crowd? Who can say? Anyway, I hope Saint Etienne continue to make quality pop music until their hearts fail (possibly in the back of a taxi).
Beginners might like to start here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Young-To-Die-1990-1995/dp/B000009FER/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1393086845&sr=8-3&keywords=saint+etienne
