Gig review: Saint Etienne

Published on Thursday 14 May 2009 19:09

**** ABC, GLASGOW

THERE can be few bands who would announce an intermission between their main set and their encore and then use a Daffy Duck cartoon to fill the gap. But Saint Etienne are one of those singular acts whose greatness becomes apparent with the slightest of reminders.

Although their career was at its peak throughout the 1990s, they created, and continue to create, music which is iconic and strangely timeless. This show – a complete recreation of their 1991 debut album, Foxbase Alpha, to mark the release of recent greatest hits collection London Conversations – demonstrated why they're such a wonderful pop band: they aren't just fascinated by music, but by the whole iconography of popular culture.

Foxbase Alpha strides between the great acid house-influenced dance-pop of their cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Nothing Can Stop Us Now, the ambient cut-ups of Wilson and Stoned to Say the Least, and the gorgeous urban soul of Girl VII, London Belongs to Me and Dilworth's Theme.

Throughout this show – which culminated in a career-spanning encore (including Who Do You Think You Are?, Like a Motorway, this year's Method of Modern Love and more) – background footage showed us Richard Wilson, Alec Guinness, Wacky Races, dancers flipping and shaking in the Northern Soul style and inert views of grey post-war architecture.

In front of this magical tableau of nostalgia, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs crouched over their keyboards in a Fred Perry shirt and a gold Elvis suit respectively, while the charming Sarah Cracknell looked Avengers-cool in a tweed trouser suit. Like their music, they haven't aged at all.