So, we're enjoying a post-sound-check chat with Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell when a couple of questions force themselves into my consciousness. What are we doing here? And why are these people being so nice to us? Well, Lara and I might never figure out quite why St Etienne's ‘people’ were so keen for our little zine to feature such a well-known act. As for the second query, one can only assume that Pete and Sarah are just uncommonly nice popstars - the nicest we've encountered since Lara palled up with PiL bass god Jah Wobble. Perhaps this is what happens to musicians who have enjoyed periods of high-profile success before settling into mid-size cult status.

Whatever the case, Sarah and Pete couldn't be more friendly and down-to-earth if they tried. By all accounts, St Etienne's other member, Bob Stanley, is a bit of a charmer too. So where is he tonight? “Bob didn't travel here with us because he's done something to his shoulder,” explains Sarah, “He's in a lot of pain. The journey here was twenty-four hours door-to-door. We thought he'd just be in agony so he flew directly. He's at the hotel, hopefully asleep.”

Too bad for him because he's missing out on the sneak preview of the newly-printed Pop Boffin issue three that his band-mates are receiving. The fact that they seem genuinely excited by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity can probably be put down to the band's origins in zinedom. “Bob and I did a fanzine together,” explains Pete, “There was lots of rubbish in it basically but we enjoyed doing it. Lots of in-jokes, collages and things like that plus the odd serious article. It was around 86, the C86 period. We had stuff about that early jangly indie music, Tim Buckley, Scott Walker… whatever we were into at the time.”

Naturally, this last comment prompts a discussion on the eccentric genius that is Noel Scott Engel. “It would have been nice to play this year [at Meltdown],” Pete ruminates, “then we might have got to meet him.” The suggestion that St Etienne should challenge the allegedly darts-obsessed star to a game of arrows doesn't seem to help matters much. “Damn! I'm really, really shit at darts,” curses Sarah before sending the conversation off on another tangent: “Bob watches darts. Did you see that Dutch guy who won, then collapsed onto his knees and burst into tears? It was amazing! I couldn't believe it! The glory moments, the tears, the anguish…”

Perhaps it's time to steer the discussion back to the matter at hand, namely St Etienne's dreamy, expansive new album, The Sound of Water. This tasty confection of empty electro-pop calories first came to my attention because it featured sleeve notes by ace iconoclastic music critic Simon Reynolds. “We've known him since years back”, explains Pete. “And he's a good writer,” adds Sarah. “We'll often play new things to him and see what he thinks of them,” Pete continues, “He's very intellectual but I like the way he talks about things and we just thought, hopefully this'll be up his street, let’s see what he thinks of it. It's more like a review, in a way, than sleeve notes. But when we get people to do them we don't tell them what we want. We just say, ‘do anything’. His is more of a critique.”

The central theme of this critique is that The Sound of Water disproves the theory that radical/experimental music has to be unpleasant. “It's something I've always thought but never articulated,” says Pete, “I think with technology nowadays you can record a lot more cheaply at home and you can have access to mad effects and things. So people are mucking around and you get indie bands and stuff being more experimental, with good tunes as well. So I think it is a good thing. I like a lot of the sounds in experimental music but I wouldn't sit and listen to a whole album of it because it's just too abstract.”

This line of thinking was proposed a few years ago by High Llamas front-man Sean O'Hagan, who just so happens to have contributed to The Sound of Water. “That's, ahem, convenient, isn't it?” jokes Sarah. “That was partly because we're all fans of the High Llamas,” says Pete. “And I suppose we're all mutually fans of The Beach Boys, which kind of helps as well,” adds Sarah. O'Hagan was brought in to provide string arrangements because, as Pete explains, “On Tiger Bay we felt like the string arrangements were perhaps a little too full-on.” “Pompous”, offers Sarah.

Whereas O'Hagan was brought in to refine St Etienne's existing sound, the band turned to an altogether less likely source to help them with their new emphasis on experimentation. German post-rockers To Rococo Rot landed the job of adding grainy electronic colours to The Sound of Water's misty songscapes. “We originally got in touch with Stefan, who was in Kreidler…” recalls Sarah. “Then he moved to To Rococo Rot,” Pete continues, “We were thinking of getting a remix done by Kreidler or at least doing something together.” “And then we heard [TRR's] The Amateur View, which is still constantly on my stereo,” Sarah enthuses. “With the songs we were writing, we just wanted to work with people who did something quite minimal but still atmospheric,” says Pete, “I think they're very atmospheric, melodic, fluid…” Sarah clarifies: “We were trying to do something quite minimal that didn't sound just empty. They seemed to be able to portray something very emotional even though there's not a lot actually going on. We tried to add a bit of that to our songs and not ruin it in the meantime.” She seems quite reverential at this point and is clearly chuffed that Stefan and co agreed to work with her band: “It's nice that when you come to ask people if they want to get involved, often they say yes. They said it emerged in an interview that the only group they all like is St Etienne. Apart from that they have really diverse tastes.”

By this point it has become clear that Sarah isn't the pretty blonde front-puppet that the press has occasionally portrayed her as. While that may have been the basis upon which she was originally hired, she has since become an integral player in the band's creativity. This is a pretty impressive achievement bearing in mind the fact that Pete and Bob probably began planning their pop career together at a prodigiously early age. Pete explains how they met at the age of two: “Our parents were friends. Our mums met in a butcher's shop. Initially he was my brother's friend because he's 18 months older. When we were about 10 we started being close friends. We went to the same school and the same college. We're almost like brothers.” Obviously, this tight knit relationship posed problems for Sarah when she joined the band. “It did take a while to get to a situation where we could write together,” she confirms, “Or where I could understand a fucking word you were talking about. All these in jokes, all the time!” Pete adds: “Now we've all got them and no one else understands.”

Still, when the confines of Bob and Pete's artfully contrived vision get too much for her, Sarah has her solo career as an escape route. This is still a going concern and there should be a new EP available by the time you read this. “There are a lot of similarities to Saint Etienne, otherwise I wouldn't be in this group in the first place,” she says, “But the lyrical content is more personal; about stuff from my past and things like that.”

Sarah also sang a song on the recent album by Magnetic Fields offshoot The Sixths. Although she's peeved that nobody's bothered to send her a copy of the album yet she declares the curmudgeonly Sixths svengali Stephin Merrit “a nice guy” with a good attitude. Maybe, but he couldn't possibly be as nice as those lovely people in Saint Etienne, who we are pleased to declare as the nicest pop stars on the face of the planet.

--Sam Macklin