Saint Etienne’s music always has a firm sense of time and place, somewhere around London, sometime between 1963 and yesterday. So it’s no surprise that the trio have finally written a whole album about the towns they grew up in. If the concept might seem a bit Brexit, the execution is flawless and winningly witty. Chirpy, unpretentious pop such as Out of My Mind rubs up against Dive’s excitable suburban disco thump and the sophisticated brilliance of Sweet Arcadia. It’s unclear why the sleevenotes append a list of “recent crimes in the home counties”, but it is obvious that this excellent album isn’t one of them.
