Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Night-time can be lively affairs in Saint Etienne’s songs. Take for example the woman in “He’s on the Phone”, tiptoeing from a hotel room amid a pulsating disco beat after a midnight assignation with a married man — released in 1995, it was one of the group’s biggest hits. Or there’s “Tonight”, a synth-pop number of more recent vintage, in which singer Sarah Cracknell sings the part of a fan excitedly preparing to see her favourite band.These scenarios, one taking place after a momentous event, the other before, are typical of Saint Etienne. The trio of Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have made a home for themselves at the fringes of things. They are a quintessentially British band with a French name who stood apart from Britpop in the 1990s; retro-futurists with a nostalgia for vanished eras of modernity, like the vintage computer on their new album’s characteristically stylish cover. Their love for chart music is apparent, but they have had modest success in the charts themselves. “He’s on the Phone” reached the heights of number 11.The Night follows the example set by its ambient-pop predecessor, 2021’s I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, in slowing the pace down. Songs unspool hazily, accompanied by the sound of rain. The lyrics mostly convey impressions and fragmentary thoughts about the passage of time. The aim, in Stanley’s words, is to evoke “the state that’s between being awake and asleep”. Made with film and television composer Augustin Bousfield, who also joined them on I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, these night-time songs are atmospheric but uneventful. “Nightingale” is a highlight with Cracknell’s reverb-treated vocals and updated echoes of English folk-rock. “Preflyte” distils a prevailing sense of melancholy into a parent’s farewell to their fledged child. Repeated phrases and images point towards an overarching structure, but it is under-developed. “Time flies,” Cracknell tells us more than once, a cliché only partially redeemed by the surrounding bird imagery. The crucial question of what time flies from or towards proves elusive.★★★☆☆‘The Night’ is released by Heavenly Recordings
